The Boat Job
by LittleFairy78
Summary: A job like most others: a con, a party on a yacht as a distraction, trying to take out the bad guys' money. But then drugs get involved, and things go to hell in a handbasket. And in this particular case, hell is a boat on its way to international waters.
1. Prologue: In Deep Water

**The Boat Job**

Summary: A job like most others – a con against the bad guys, a party on a yacht as a distraction, the chance to get to the bad guys' money in the meantime. But then drugs get involved, and the whole con goes to hell in a hand basket. And in this particular case, hell is a boat on its way to international waters.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Leverage. I'm not connected to the people who do own the idea and the characters in any way. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made with this story as it was written for entertainment purposes only.

Rating: T. There will be bad language and violence.

Spoilers: No specific episodic spoilers so far, but generally everything in the first season is fair game.

Author's Notes: Huge thanks have to go out to windscryer, who patiently listened to what I wanted to do and provided nautical expertise on all matters boat-related. This story would have been a heck of a lot less credible without her help.

**Prologue – In Deep Water**

The sounds in Nate's earpiece were distorted and laced with static. Reception had been an issue at the docks, but so far they had managed to hold contact throughout the entire job. And Nate knew that it wasn't the crappy reception that was causing most of the distortions this time.

No, it was rapid movement on the other end of this connection, panted breaths and small grunts that carried over the link and into Nate's ear. He knew that the person on the other end had no time to talk right now, no thought to spare to give him some sort of status report, but Nate felt his insides clench with anticipation and the fervent wish to know what was going on.

But they had no eyes in the room, only ears, so all he could do was listen as what had seemed like an average to easy job at a time went downhill at a rapid speed. The sound of rapid but controlled breathing was the only constant he heard amidst the chaos of other sounds – flesh striking flesh, rapid commands and wordless shouts in the background, grunts and sounds of pain that Nate could not attribute to a certain person with any certainty.

It was the soundtrack of a fight Nate found himself listening to, and without visual confirmation he had no idea who was winning. Hell, he didn't even know how many opponents his men were facing right now.

Of course there was Nate's underlying faith in Eliot's skills. If there was anybody he trusted to get out of this unexpected trouble, it was him. But still, Nate couldn't help it each and every time something like this happened on a job. That knot in his stomach wasn't going to dissolve until the sounds of fighting ended and Eliot told him that the situation was under control.

Nate was longing for a drink right now, but even if something had been readily available he wouldn't have been able to tear any of his attention away from listening to what was coming over his earpiece right now.

Later.

After he knew that the job was back on track and nobody had gotten hurt.

Then suddenly, there was a loud smack of flesh hitting flesh, a pained grunt, and the link fell silent.

Automatically, Nate's hand went up to his ear, as if checking whether the small earpiece had fallen out. But it was still in place, it was only the sounds of the connection that had stopped. For a moment, Nate feared that the bad reception at the docks had finally cut off their connection, right at a point when it was vital for him to know what was going on. Only, the connection wasn't dead. Nate could still hear rapid breathing in his ear. The only thing that had changed was that the fighting sounds had ended.

Just as Nate was about to ask Eliot for his status, another voice spoke up.

"I think it's time for you to surrender."

And though the unknown voice had a hard edge to it, the confidence of a man who was sure of the outcome, a confidence that came with a gun pointed at your opponent's head, Nate wanted to laugh.

Asking Eliot to surrender was asking for the impossible. Eliot wasn't made to surrender, and Nate seriously wondered at times whether the word was even a part of the man's vocabulary.

So even if the guy who had spoken had a gun trained on their enforcer, that for sure wasn't enough to make Eliot surrender. Right now, he was probably waging his options, thinking up a strategy on how to continue this fight. And it wouldn't take long until the sounds of fighting were going to pick up again, Nate was sure of that.

But nothing happened but more silence, interrupted only by Eliot's rapid breathing.

Nate tried to picture the scene in his head, the stalemate, but found that he couldn't. And it didn't matter much, because it wasn't going to last long. Eliot wasn't going to surrender, and in a couple of moments those guys wouldn't know what had hit them.

But the silence continued to stretch, long and nerve-wracking. Nate found himself holding his breath as he waited for something – anything really – to put an end to the silence.

And then it did. A metallic click echoed through the silence, a sound Nate couldn't place. Before he had the chance to even try to figure out what that sound had been, the impossible happened.

Nate thought he knew Eliot as well as the other man allowed someone to know him. And over the months of working together with him, he thought he had formed a clear picture of what he could expect and what he couldn't expect from the other man.

If there was one thing Nate had been sure he would never hear coming out of Eliot's mouth, then it were the next words he heard. Eliot's voice was tight and controlled, slightly out of breath from the fight, but firm and definite.

The voice left no doubt that Eliot was coherent, and that he knew what he was doing.

It were the words that made no sense and had Nate reeling. If he had needed any confirmation that this job had gone straight to hell a few minutes ago, then it were those words, because it weren't words Nate had ever thought he'd hear coming out of Eliot Spencer's mouth.

"All right, you win. I give up."

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*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

**TBC...**

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

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Thanks for reading. Admittedly, the prologue was short, but that's in the nature of the thing. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	2. Blown Out of the Water

Here's the next chapter, thank you all so much for your great reviews for the prologue. This one should clear up any questions as to what happened. Warning - it grew kinda long ;-)

This one is fore jensenluv, whom I accidentally infected with the Leverage virus when she actually had me on author alert for another fandom. Welcome to the folds, and enjoy!

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**Chapter 1 – ****Blown Out Of The Water**

_*Earlier the same day*_

Nate settled in the back of the van, taking a seat amidst all the surveillance equipment Hardison had set up. He would have preferred to be out there with the team, or at least in a base somewhere where he felt familiar. But this job had taken them to San Diego, away from headquarters and the comfortable feeling of safety that their home base provided.

And he couldn't be out there because the team was already split up, and he needed to be the link between them in case things went south. Having that kind of backup plan was his own rule, which made the irony even worse. Of course the most dangerous thing was to get too sure of themselves, but so far Nate didn't have the feeling that this job was going to go wrong. They had planned it all too carefully, and if things went according to plan they were going to be out of here in less than an hour. With the money.

So there really was no need for him to sit here in the van and coordinate the job, but this time it was his part in it. So he was going to play it. And at least he was going to be able to watch Sophie's part of the con through the small buttonhole-camera that Hardison had placed in her brooch. Parker was with Sophie, acting as one of the catering staff that was serving the exclusive party on the yacht, and Eliot and Hardison were in position at the docks, waiting for their 'go' as soon as Sophie had the information they were going to need.

Their target this time was a man called Hector Fuentes, a San Diego businessman. Although something in Nate bristled at the thought of calling that guy a _man_. In his mid-twenties and coming from a rich background, Fuentes had built a whole business venture for himself over the past three years, a franchise that spread over a whole number of business areas, none of them entirely legal. They had only ended up targeting Fuentes directly after a whole lot of digging had revealed him to be the head of a dummy corporation that stood behind the guys they had been hired to find.

The clients who had involved them in this job was an elderly couple who had been screwed over by one of Fuentes' businesses. The couple, Adam and Eileen Turner, were the owners of a small auto-shop. It was one of those garages that had nothing to the big chains in looks and flashiness, but that had been around for practically forever. Adam Turner took pride in the quality of his work, and he had a long list of regular customers.

But times of recession had hit, and despite those regular customers, the number of jobs and the cash flow had gone down remarkably. Enter Fuentes. One of his bogus companies had offered Adam Turner a partnership, the promise of financial support in modernizing the equipment and get the business going again. The garage had been supposed to stay in the Turner's possession, with their new partners taking a certain percentage of the profit as payment for the modernizations they had made possible.

As soon as the Turners had signed the papers, one of Fuentes' henchmen had swept in, taking charge and before they knew what had hit them, the Turners had found their garage to be a part of a large chain, and Adam Turner had been confronted with the choice to either keep working at what had been his own garage for a minimum wage, or leave.

Too late the Turners had involved their lawyer, and it had turned out that they had legally signed over ownership to Fuentes' company, and everything the lawyer present at the signing of the contract had told them about how they were going to keep the ownership had been bogus. From one moment to the next, the Turners had seen their life-savings that they had put into the garage torn away from them.

It was a scheme Fuentes liked to employ – buy off small but well-running businesses under the pretence of keeping the original owners involved, then boot them out of the affair by shady contracts. The target were people exactly like the Turners, not legally versed enough to recognize when they were being conned like that. Once they realized what was going on, it was too late to do anything.

And that was only one of Fuentes' sources of income. Fuentes was the kind of criminal Nate despised the most. He was one of the kind who simply couldn't get enough and wanted a part in everything. No matter where or what, as long as it brought in money Fuentes wanted in on it. Fuentes' family background was clean, it wasn't as if he came from a long line of mobsters, but looking at the schemes the man had running in all different areas, Nate thought that he was aspiring to run the city one day.

From what Nate guessed, sooner or later Fuentes was going to fall flat on his face because he ran too many different schemes at once. In every city there were gangs and groups that ran certain areas of crime, and they didn't take it lightly if a newcomer got in between them and their business.

But that wasn't their main concern right now.

Their clients were the Turners, and it was their job to get the $275,000 that their garage including all the equipment and running contracts had been worth. That was their main goal. If they found anything incriminating against Fuentes in the meantime, a way to bring him down before he rose up even higher on the food chain, it was an added bonus. They were going to take every piece of incriminating evidence they would find along the way, but their main focus was the money.

Bringing Fuentes down was only the second step in the plan.

And tonight was the night where they were going to get the money back, and that was why Nate was sitting uncomfortably in the back of a parked van close by the private marina where Fuentes was having an exclusive party on his yacht that was anchored there.

Over the past days, Sophie had been posing as a business woman with an interest in cooperating with yet another of Fuentes' recent ventures, the import of cheap clothes from Mexico. It had taken a while, and a lot of background work from Hardison, before Fuentes' henchmen had been convinced enough of Sophie's real interest to let her through to the big boss. If there was anything about his behavior that already resembled that of a mobster, then it was how much in the background Fuentes liked to keep himself. Had to give it to him, the guy was careful. Getting him to take the fall for what he was doing wasn't going to be easy, but they were going to figure something out.

For now, there were two possible payoffs for this con. Either Fuentes was going to accept the deal with Sophie tonight, which was the option Nate preferred. They knew from their research that Fuentes didn't have much money in the accounts they had found so far. Not enough for his deal. But if he agreed, then he was going to have to call and liquidize some of his money for paying Sophie. That way they were going to get his account numbers and passwords and could clear him out.

The other option right now were Hardison and Eliot. The two of them were currently waiting for Nate's signal close by an office building near the docks. The building belonged to yet another of Fuentes' shell companies, and from the phone calls they had intercepted they knew that Fuentes was planning a big business transaction. That knowledge was underlined by the fact that Fuentes was giving a party for his 'new business partners' on his yacht that night, and since he had yet to agree to making the deal with Sophie, the team was sure that this didn't mean them.

No, Fuentes was hatching another scheme to add to his ever-growing list, and from the little snippets they had gathered over the past days, it was something big. There was either cash or merchandise going to be stored at the office, and if they were ever going to find incriminating evidence against Fuentes that would help bring him down, then it was there, and tonight. Also, the office building was from where Fuentes' partner handled the money transfers, so if they were going to find his passwords and account numbers, it was on a computer in there.

But they had to wait a little more.

For the past days, they had staked out Fuentes and his business as much as they could. From what they had gathered, Fuentes kept himself in the background as far as the day-to-day business was concerned. That was the job of his second in command, Raymond Berger. And over the past days, Berger had been in that office day in, day out. Whatever Fuentes had planned, it was something big. And every single evening, Berger made a call to Fuentes to update him on the most recent developments. Only after that did Berger lock up the office and leave it for the night.

Getting into the office was no problem. Even taking out Berger would be not much of a problem for Eliot, whether the guy had his bodyguard with him or not. But if they took out Berger and he didn't make his regular call to Fuentes, their target might know that something was up and jeopardize the mission.

So for now the plan was to wait. Sophie was supposed to reel Fuentes in and close the deal with him, and as soon as Fuentes was assured that Berger was closing up business for the night, Eliot and Hardison were going to start searching the office. Parker was posing as a member of the catering staff on board of the yacht to support Sophie if need be, and Nate was sitting in the uncomfortable van, watching the team set their plan into motion.

On the monitor in front of him, he could watch the feed from the small camera in Sophie's brooch. The image was a little blurry from movement, and the quality wasn't what Hardison had wanted to achieve, but it was definitely good enough to watch Fuentes as Sophie was making conversation.

The Spanish sounding name was misleading. Fuentes was a tall, pale man with too long light brown hair that kept falling into his eyes, and piercing blue eyes. It was obvious that Fuentes considered himself to be a playboy, using the attraction that came with having a lot of money to get what he wanted, when he wanted it. Even with Sophie who was ten years his senior – a fact that Nate would never, _never_ ever admit while Sophie was present – his leering towards her was anything but subtle.

"Okay, Sophie," Nate said into his microphone. "Try to get some more information out of him."

Sophie was too good of an actress during a con to give a nod of acknowledgement. Instead, she fluidly changed the topic of their conversation, which until that moment had been about this new yacht, how big it was and – most importantly – how many millions it had cost, and how much Fuentes would love to take Sophie on a spin on it later, after the party had died down.

"So tell me," Sophie said in her fake Spanish-lilt, "what mysterious business partners are you giving this splendid party for, Mr. Fuentes?"

Fuentes took the change in topic in stride, and the grin on his face widened.

"Oh, call me Hector, Miss Valdez."

Sophie didn't miss a beat. "Only if you call me Elena, Hector."

"Elena. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman."

Nate wanted to gag at the exchange, and at Fuentes' sweet talking. It was part of the job to be listening in on these kinds of conversations on occasion, but Fuentes really made the worst pick-up lines Nate had heard in his life look good.

"Don't let him distract you from the topic, Sophie. Try to find out what this business deal is all about. The more we know, the less search Eliot and Hardison are going to have to do later on."

Nate could see Sophie's champagne flue pass the camera as she raised it to her lips. He could just imagine how she was playing Fuentes with subtle signals, luring him in a false sense of security with her beauty that would stop him from noticing that her every move was smartly planned.

"Hector, such a spectacular party, on a yacht as beautiful as this one. While I would love to believe that this party is in celebration of our future joined enterprise, we haven't made any definite commitments yet."

Fuentes smiled another sleazy smile. "Was there a question somewhere in there, Elena?"

"Oh, but I thought you were a man who could read the subtext. Don't disappoint me, Hector."

Fuentes laughed, and Nate wondered for how long he was going to have to listen to this before Fuentes got the call, Eliot and Hardison could enter the office and Sophie could move in for the kill, metaphorically speaking. He was sure he wasn't going to be able to listen to this for much longer, not without a stiff drink.

Through the camera feed, Nate could see how Fuentes raised Sophie's hand up to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

"If you want to, I will throw a party that is much bigger and much more elegant once we close our deal. And it is only a matter of time until Ray has confirmed the conditions you proposed. But you're right, dearest Elena. This party is in celebration of a very big business deal I have just closed. A new venture, much more profitable than all my previous ventures. Unfortunately my partners were unable to attend, but that shouldn't ruin our fun now, should it?"

"Of course not." Sophie gave an amused chuckle. "I only hope you didn't decide to cooperate with somebody else about clothes imports."

It was Sophie's subtle way of trying to get Fuentes to tell her more about what this new business deal was about, but the man only laughed and brushed her off.

"I wouldn't dream of it. But I'm afraid I cannot give you any details on that deal, Elena. Let's just say that it is lucrative, and leave it at that. Though no deal is lucrative enough for me to neglect my other ventures. I still have a keen interest on closing the deal you are proposing."

Well, that at least was something. Nate leaned back against the wall of the van and tried to tune out the conversation as much as possible. Fuentes wasn't spilling what his secret deal was about, so Sophie had to try and make conversation until they could proceed with the plan. At least it was easy to let Sophie's conversation with Fuentes wash over him without really listening, trusting on any change in Sophie's tone of voice to alert him to anything out of the ordinary.

Much easier in any case than it had been to try and tune out Eliot and Hardison earlier. Eliot could wait silently for hours, all night long if need be, but for some reason that changed whenever Hardison was thrown in the mix. Their constant bickering had been so annoying that it had taken a couple of sharp words from him earlier to make them fall silent, aside from the occasional _careful with that slushy_, _I'm bored_ and _shut up Hardison_.

But they had been silent for a while now, so maybe it was time to check in again, if only to make sure they hadn't killed each other. Or rather, to make sure that Eliot hadn't killed Hardison, because…well, because that was the only alternative here.

"Eliot, what's your status?"

"We're still watching the office," Eliot's voice sounded in his ear. "Berger's inside, on his laptop. There's one bodyguard with him, nobody else around aside from the guards outside."

Exactly what they had expected. Nate nodded to himself. Berger would be checking Sophie's offer and whatever other business deals Fuentes was about to make before he called his boss.

"Hardison?"

"I'm ready. Berger picks up his phone, we're going to listen in."

"How about his account numbers and passwords?"

"He uses his phone to get to the money, or does it online on his laptop, we'll know everything we need to know before the people at his bank do."

Nate nodded again. "Good. Once you got all that, help Eliot to search the office."

"Sure thing."

"Nate," Eliot's voice interrupted them. "I think Berger's making the call."

There was the sound of typing coming distantly out of the earpiece, then Hardison fell in. "Yeah, he's calling Fuentes' cell phone."

Nate shifted his attention back to the screen showing the feed from Sophie's video camera. Barely a second later, Fuentes' phone started ringing and he took a step back with an apologetic smile.

"Excuse me, I've got to take this."

"Of course." Sophie turned away and took a few steps to the side, luring Fuentes in a false sense of privacy concerning his call. He picked up.

"Yeah, Ray?"

"Hector, I've checked Valdez' offer."

"And?"

Nate wasn't worried. Hardison's background work was solid, he didn't expect any of it to blow up in their faces.

"It seems legit enough. Now, I have no idea how she can manage to keep up prices as low as the ones she has offered us, but I guess she's running some serious sweat-shops down in Mexico. Everything else she said checks out in detail. You close this deal, the profit margin will be enormous."

Sophie was still turned towards Valdez, and in the video feed Nate saw the man look at her for a short moment, a smile on his face.

"Good. Transfer the money, I'll tell her that she's got a deal. What about the other thing?"

Come on! Couldn't criminals at least name their crimes when they were having a private conversation with one another? It would make things so much easier.

"The merchandise arrived. I checked it, it's all as promised. The deal went off without a hitch Hector, no reason to worry."

"I'm not worrying. I just need to make sure that everything goes according to plan on this one. We can't screw up the first shipment. Where is it now?"

"Office back room, just where it was delivered. Our guy is going to come pick it up first thing tomorrow morning."

Fuentes fell silent for a moment, a fact that didn't seem to go unnoticed by Berger.

"You want me to call him and reschedule the pickup? I could have him here in an hour."

Fuentes thought for a moment, then shook his head even though he was on the phone. "No, let's stick with the plan. Pickup first thing tomorrow morning, just as planned. Transfer Valdez' money and then call it a night."

"Will do."

They hung up without saying goodbye, and on the screen Nate watched as Fuentes walked back to Sophie's side.

"Was that the call we were waiting for?" Sophie asked.

Fuentes smiled widely. "It was indeed. My partner assured me that everything about our deal is just as you proposed. I told him to transfer the money."

Sophie raised her champagne flute towards him. "This means we're in business now, Hector?"

"It means exactly that, my dearest Elena." He raised his own glass. "To a long and fruitful partnership."

They clinked glasses, and Nate turned away from the screen. They had Fuentes hooked and reeled in, Sophie could do the wrap up. And once they had the confirmation that the money had been transferred, they could focus on finding incriminating evidence to put Fuentes out of business and into prison for a long time. Then they were out of here.

"Hardison, what's our status?"

"Berger just transferred three hundred thousand dollars from an offshore account to the fake business account Sophie gave him. I have the account number and the password. I'm guessing it's not his only account, there's only about half a million left on it after that transfer. That can't be all the money Fuentes has."

Yes, because it would have been far too easy to rob Fuentes blind in just one go. And as satisfying as three hundred thousand dollars for their clients were, it wasn't the kind of money Fuentes would miss in the long run. No, they needed to really hurt him financially, and for that they needed more information.

"He must have split up his money. All right, we got the money for the Turners, now we bring Fuentes down. Take whatever is left in that offshore account, Hardison. Once you're in the office, try to find out where else Fuentes could have his money stashed away."

"Will do," the computer expert said, even though he didn't sound too optimistic. "I can try the office computer, but Berger has done all money transfers from his laptop while we've been watching him. I don't think the info we're looking for is anywhere on the office computer, but I'll take a look."

"Do that. Eliot, as soon as Berger leaves, give him five minutes to be gone, then the two of you go in."

"Okay."

"You heard what Berger said about the other deal?"

"Yeah. The merchandise is in the back room."

Nate knew he needn't have asked. Eliot might look the part of a thug, but he knew how to use his brain and was always planning a step or two ahead. He had to be a good strategist. Without it, you didn't stay alive for long in his line of business.

"I want to know what it is."

"You got it."

"Good. Let me know as soon as you go in. Sophie, we have the money. I will let you know as soon as Eliot and Hardison are done, then you can find an excuse to leave the party. Parker, keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. We're wrapping this up, but we can't afford to get sloppy."

"Okay," came Parker's reply. Sophie didn't answer, but he thought he saw the movement of a carefully concealed nod over the video feed. Nate sighed and leaned back against the wall of the van. Half an hour, then they would be out of here.

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

**OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo**

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

Eliot raised his binoculars and watched Raymond Berger through the slits in the blinds of the small office window. He and Hardison had spent the past two and a half hours sitting in his car, parked right outside the fenced off area at the outermost part of the docks were Fuentes' office was located, waiting for Berger to transfer the money and then leave.

Well, it wasn't so much an office as a warehouse with a separate room that was used as an office, but that was the place from which Fuentes ran all his business. Of course he had a flashy office in a high-rise in the city, but one of Parker's nightly forays had proven that the office there was nothing but a front. Not a place where business transactions were made, and definitely not the place where any incriminating material against Fuentes could be found.

Not that Eliot was surprised. Fuentes might be the one behind all these scams, the one who hauled in the profit, but it was Berger who was effectively running most of his operations. Fuentes was a playboy, nothing more. He liked to see himself as a businessman, but from what he knew about the man, Eliot was sure that Fuentes wouldn't be where he was now without men like Berger running the everyday business for him.

Fuentes employed a nightly guard for the warehouse. A pair of guards securing the premise around the warehouse and office as well as some of the containers belonging to Fuentes' business. Tonight, that number had been doubled to four.

Still not a problem, especially since all they had to do was evade those guards, not take them out. The guards were on a fixed routine. Every ten minutes a pair of guards passed the office door and slowly circled the warehouse before continuing their route. Eliot had timed them over the past hours, to get to know their window of opportunity. Ten minutes were plenty of time to squeeze through the gap in the chain-link fence he had cut earlier, make their way over to the office door and break in.

Hardison had laughed when Nate had asked if any of the security cameras around the perimeter were going to be a problem, so Eliot guessed he needn't worry about those. He didn't even ask what the other man was going to do about those, because he just knew he wasn't going to understand it, anyway.

At least after that call, things were going to get moving. Not that Eliot minded stakeouts, or simply waiting silently for his opportunity to move in. He was good at waiting. But Hardison was another matter entirely. The computer expert wasn't made for stakeouts, or silent waits. Or for silence in general.

Eliot would have preferred to work this break-in alone, but he had to admit that Nate was right – they needed Hardison to disengage the security cameras, and they needed him to search the office computer for anything that could be used to bring the man down. Eliot didn't like it, not with four armed men patrolling the building they were going to break into, but that was just the way jobs sometimes worked out. He would simply have to be twice as vigilant as he normally was.

From the distance of his car Eliot watched as in the office Berger got up from his chair, shut his laptop and said a few words to his bodyguard. They had no way to overhear the brief exchange, but judged by the relaxed laugh the other man was giving it had nothing to do with business anyway. Berger prepared to lock the office up for the night, and Eliot put the binoculars down.

"Nate, Berger is leaving."

"Good," Nate's voice came over the com. "Make sure that he's gone, then go in. Make this as quick as you can."

"Roger that."

The lights in the office went out, and a moment later Berger and his bodyguard appeared in the office doorway. Eliot turned towards Hardison.

"Whatever it is you planned on doing with those cameras, you better get started."

"Whatever it is I'm planning to do?" There was indignation in Hardison's voice, even though he didn't look up from typing on his laptop. "You make it sound like I'm practicing some kind of voodoo. Seriously, it's a science, one that takes skill and dexterity, not to mention a lot of…"

Eyes still on the building, counting down until the guards were due to appear again, Eliot interrupted the hacker. "More typing, less talking."

Hardison sighed a long suffering sigh. "You just don't appreciate the art, Eliot."

Eliot shook his head, never once taking his eyes off the building. One pair of guards should pass by the office any moment now. For a few moments, the only sounds in the car were the sounds of Hardison's furious typing.

"All right," Hardison finally said. "I've hacked into the camera's data streams and looped the feed, ten minutes on the outside so that whoever is watching sees the guards pass by in regular intervals. And the feed of the empty office since Berger left for the two cameras inside the warehouse and the office. We're good to go."

As if on cue, something moved in the shadows, and a moment later the shapes of two of the guards came into view in the dim outside lights that illuminated the front of the building. Eliot tensed in his seat, hand going out to the door handle.

"Okay. As soon as they take the corner, we make our way over towards the door. Stay behind me. How long is it going to take you to open the lock?"

"Electric keypad?" Hardison shrugged, the corners of his mouth turned downwards in deliberation. "Depending on how long the code is, somewhere between ten and thirty seconds, not more."

"Good. Once we're in, you take the computer and start copying everything you think is helpful. I'll take a look at that mysterious shipment that arrived today."

"All right."

The guards walked past the office door and vanished around the corner of the building a moment later. Eliot silently counted to five, then opened the door of the car.

"Let's go."

Hardison followed him, leaving the laptop behind on the passenger seat. They shut their car doors silently so that the out of place sound wouldn't alert the guards to their presence, then made their way over towards the hole in fence Eliot had cut earlier. It was ridiculously easy, actually, getting on the other side of the fence and close to the building. They crossed the short distance to the office door where Hardison plugged one of his gizmos into the keypad that secured the door. Eliot kept an eye out on their surroundings, always anticipating a break in the guards' routine. While Hardison's small device emitted a few low beeps, Eliot kept counting in his head. Eight minutes until the other pair of guards was due to appear.

The door opened with a click, and Eliot quickly pushed Hardison into the room and closed the door behind them. Seeing that the other man reflexively reached towards the light switch, Eliot grabbed his wrist and jerked him back.

"What do you think you're doing?" He hissed. "Do you want me to put a sign on the door? _Don't disturb, break-in in progress_?"

"Chill dude." Hardison shook his head. "It was a reflex. Besides, how are we supposed to see anything in here when it's pitch black?"

"You won't need any light to use the computer. For everything else, there's light coming in from the two lamps outside."

It wasn't much more than a dim glow, but it was enough to navigate through the office without bumping into the furniture, and it would have to be enough to look over any kind of paperwork they might find. It was definitely enough for Eliot to see Hardison's eye roll as he turned around and walked over towards the desktop computer.

"Just because you're part-bat doesn't mean we can all see in the dark. We could at least have brought some flashlights."

"Just…just turn on the computer, Hardison." Eliot said with the same feeling of wordless frustration he often felt when Hardison went into another of his rants that showed just how different their background and normal line of work were. Turning away, he directed his next words at Nate.

"We're in."

"Good. Go check what that mysterious shipment is all about while Hardison copies the files from the hard drive. Then take a look if there's any other paperwork around and get out of there."

"Understood."

By now Hardison was powering up the desktop computer, and with some worry Eliot noticed that the way it was placed, the light from the monitor would be seen when the guards passed the office window through which he had watched Berger earlier.

"Hardison!"

The other man turned around while the system booted up. "What?"

"Five minutes, then you need to shut down the monitor until the guards are past the office."

"Okay."

Eliot took a second to assess the situation. The office was small and cramped, and the layout was simple enough. A door leading into the warehouse to the left, the computer Hardison was working on to his right, and another door ahead. Berger had said the shipment was in the office storage room and not in the warehouse, so it had to be behind that door. Eliot moved quickly over and opened it.

The room beyond was small and cramped. There was no window, which for once was good news. Eliot quickly stepped into the room, closed the door behind himself and pulled his small flashlight out of his jeans pocket and turned it on.

Shelves were lining the walls on two sides of the small room, most of them empty, some randomly filled with standard office supplies and two pallets of water bottles. Else the room was bare, except for four knee-high cardboard boxes standing in the lower shelf farthest from the door. It were plain cardboard boxes with no shipping labels or anything else on them, which suggested that they had been transported in some other container and had been unpacked before being brought here.

All four boxes had been taped shut at one point, but were now sliced open at the top, and Eliot wasted no time in pulling one of them off the shelf.

"Nate, I found the shipment they were talking about."

"What is it?" Nate's voice rang in Eliot's ear in the silence of the small storage room. He quickly pulled open the cardboard flaps and moved away the packing material covering the top layer of whatever was in the box. When his eyes fell onto the contents of the box, he let out a soft curse and immediately reached for the second box, pulling it out of the shelf as well. But he already knew that the other three boxes wouldn't contain anything else than the first box had.

"Eliot?" Nate asked, his voice slightly concerned.

Eliot reached into the first box and pulled out one of the brick-like packages to examine it more closely, even though there was no doubt as to what it was he was holding in his hands.

"It's cocaine, Nate."

"Damn." The soft exclamation echoed over the connection. "How much?"

"There's four boxes, about fifty pounds each."

"Two-hundred pounds of cocaine?"

Eliot nodded as he started putting the boxes back into the shelf.

"Yeah, by a rough estimate. By normal market prices that's about six hundred thousand dollars he's got here, even more if he cuts the stuff before he sells it. He can easily make about a million with what he's got here."

Nate sighed. "Well, that explains Fuentes' nervousness. This is definitely big."

Eliot pushed the last box back into the shelf and turned off his flashlight.

"It's stupid," he said as he let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness again and reached for the door back into the office where Hardison was. "Fuentes isn't involved in any drug business as far as we know."

"Well, seems he decided to change that."

Eliot suppressed a laugh. "Yeah right. I wish him good luck when the guys who run the drug business here in San Diego right now get wind of this."

He closed the door to the small storage room behind himself, feeling Hardison's eyes on him.

"Are you done?"

"Nearly." The younger man turned back towards the computer screen. "There is a whole lot of crap on this computer, could be shipping files, could be business records, but it could as well be someone's attempt to write the next great American novel. I need to go over it once we get back to the car."

Eliot nodded. "Good. You got two more minutes before the second pair of guards is due, by then the monitor has to be turned off."

"You got it."

Hardison turned back to whatever it was he was doing, and Eliot was just about to turn towards the filing cabinet in the corner when Sophie's voice sounded in his ear.

"Nate, we have a problem."

"Nate?" Eliot stopped and listened. If Sophie was breaking role to talk to Nate directly, something was going on that was worth paying attention to.

"Just a second. Fuentes is calling Berger again."

Eliot stood and listened as the connection fell silent while Nate listened in on the call. This was unexpected, and unexpected developments always meant complications. Over the silence, he strained to listen for any unusual sounds from outside the office building, but there was nothing to hear.

"Eliot, Fuentes changed his mind."

"About what?"

"He called Berger and told him to have the cocaine picked up tonight instead of tomorrow. Berger is on his way back to the warehouse, and he's arranging the pickup right now."

"Damn."

It didn't surprise Eliot that Fuentes got nervous about this much cocaine lying in his warehouse over night. Security around here was a joke, despite the guards and cameras. And if the drugs were found here, it would be too easy to link them to Fuentes. No small wonder he wanted them out of his office as soon as possible.

"Eliot, I want you and Hardison out of there right now. Sophie, Parker, get off that yacht as fast as you can without raising suspicion. I'm pulling the plug, the risk is too high."

"Okay. Hardison, you heard him. We're out of here."

Hardison hit a few keys, then pulled out the small flashdrive he had connected to the office computer. Eliot watched him, his mind on overdrive. They had to leave before Berger got back. The guards weren't likely to come into the office, but Berger for sure would, and by then they had to be gone. So they needed to wait until the guards that were due any moment now had passed the office, and sneak back out as soon as they were out of sight.

As if on cue, there was the sound of a voice approaching from outside.

"Turn off the monitor," Eliot mouthed, pointing furiously at the still lit screen. Hardison thumbed the button and the monitor shut down, the lack of its glow throwing the office into darkness. Eliot gestured for Hardison to come over to where he stood – behind the door, just in case the guards had the codes for the lock and decided to come in.

"Understood sir," the voice outside said, and the tread of heavy boots approached the door. Eliot strained to listen to what the man was saying as he approached the office door.

"Me and Richards, sir. Vaughn and Hernandez are making their rounds at the containers, but I could call them over." A moment of silence. "Of course sir, we'll stay here until you arrive."

Damn. Just what they needed. Berger had called the guards, and obviously he had told them to stay by the office until he arrived. Which meant they weren't getting out of here, at least not through the front door. Just great.

Eliot turned around, tapped Hardison on the shoulder and immediately pressed his index finger over his lips to signal the other man to stay silent. Hardison's eyes were wide, but he nodded. Eliot gestured towards the door that led the adjourning warehouse. The warehouse had a loading dock, and right now that was their only chance of getting out of here.

"Eliot, what's your status? Are Hardison and you out?"

Eliot didn't answer. He wasn't going to risk alerting the guards outside to their presence, not with at least another wall between them. Eliot approached the door, hoping that it wasn't locked. Picking a lock in near-darkness, under time pressure and with the need to remain silent was more Parker's area of expertise than his. Personally, he was more the kind of guy who kicked in a door when it was in his way.

But the knob turned and the door opened as he pulled. Hardison's eyes were boring a hole in his side, urging him to move faster, but Eliot wasn't going to risk a creaking door betraying the fact that they were in here.

"Eliot, Hardison, what's your status?" Nate's voice sounded urgent, but Eliot didn't answer, and he shook his head at Hardison to remain silent as well. When the door was open wide enough, Eliot let Hardison squeeze through first, then went after him and pulled the door close again just as agonizingly slow as he had opened it. Finally, the lock clicked shut silently, and Eliot turned his back to the door and took a few steps into the warehouse.

"Eliot!"

"We can't get out through the front door," Eliot finally answered Nate's calls. "Berger called the guards, told them to stay there until he arrives."

"Where are you now?"

"In the warehouse. We'll try to get out through here."

"Good. Just stay clear of the guards."

Eliot didn't need any further prompting for that. Nightshift guards who made their rounds like clockwork like these guys meant they weren't talking about moonlighting cops here. Eliot had watched them for nearly three hours, and by now he was pretty sure that they were ex-military. He certainly wasn't going to underestimate them, especially not with Hardison around.

Eliot took quick stock of the warehouse. It wasn't too big, but the room seemed larger due to the fact that it was nearly empty. Only a couple of large crates were standing against one wall. From what they had learned about Fuentes' business over the past days, Eliot guessed that it was a shipment of auto parts waiting to be transported to the respective garages in Fuentes' chain. And there, on the other side of the warehouse, was the loading dock. One large gate to get bigger containers into the warehouse, with an inbuilt small door for people to go through.

It was their only way to get out of here.

At that moment, there was the sound of a door opening and steps in the adjourning office. Eliot's head snapped around to face Hardison. They needed to get out of here.

"Hardison, go and open the door."

Immediately, Nate's voice sounded through his earpiece again. "What's going on?"

"They're in the office."

And then it all suddenly happened very fast. The steps in the office grew hurried, and the voice Eliot had heard outside the building earlier called out.

"Why is the computer on?"

Eliot cursed silently. Hardison had shut down the monitor, but there hadn't been time to power down the computer. The soft hum from the machine was a normal everyday sound, but in the silence of the empty and dark office it rang out loud and clear.

"Richards, go check the warehouse. Someone's been in here."

Damn.

"Hardison, open the damn door," Eliot forced out between clenched teeth. "Make sure nobody's outside, then make a run for it. Stay low, and get to the car as fast as you can. I'll be right behind you."

From his position at the door, Hardison looked up across the warehouse to Eliot.

"But…"

"Just do it!"

If this was going to work out, he needed for Hardison to do as he said. He could hold off two of the guards, probably all four of them if he had to, but he couldn't watch out for Hardison while he did so.

Steps were approaching the door, and Eliot pressed himself against the wall beside it, getting ready. His chances were best if he took the guards out one by one, and the best spot to do so was at the door. He only hoped that Hardison was going to hurry the hell up with the lock.

And then the door connecting the warehouse with the office opened, and Eliot stopped thinking about anything but those guards, and how to best take them out. It was still too dark to see much, but his eyes had accustomed to the darkness and he could make out a low crouching shadow making its way into the room. Crouching low when going through a door only confirmed Eliot's assessment that this weren't moonlighting cops they were dealing with. But he knew how to deal with guys like that, and he knew that the element of surprise was his one big advantage. A dull metallic glint told him everything he needed to know about where the guard's gun was.

Eliot exploded into movement.

One well-placed strike knocked the gun out of the guard's hand, and before the man's surprised grunt even reached his ears Eliot reached for the man's wrist and pulled him into the room, trying to throw him off balance in the hope of taking him out quickly. As long as he engaged the man in a hand to hand battle, the other one hopefully didn't consider using his gun. But after the first split-second of surprise, the guard somehow managed to turn the movement against him, and instead of pulling Eliot suddenly found himself pulled off-balance by a harsh jerk on his arm.

"There's another one at the door!"

So Hardison wasn't out of the warehouse yet. Eliot took a quick double step to regain his footing and brought his left hand up in a punch. Flesh struck flesh and the guard's head snapped back, but he kept a firm hold on the sleeve of Eliot's jacket. Eliot heard the second guard storm into the warehouse and quickly spun around so that he came up behind the guard's back, slamming the side of his palm into the man's unprotected neck. The blow had enough force to bring the guard to his knees, and Eliot kicked him hard in the kidneys before he turned and focused on the second guard.

It wasn't enough to keep the first guard knocked out for long, Eliot knew that, but right now he needed to make sure that Hardison got away. Eliot started running and physically slammed into the other guard. It wasn't elegant, but it was the quickest way to stop the man. They tumbled to the rough concrete floor in a tangle of limbs, and Eliot rolled with the impact until he felt his hands and feet under him and jumped into a low crouch.

The guard wasn't fazed by the tumble for long, either. From the corner of his eyes Eliot saw him rise up again even as he himself was still straightening up. Nate's voice was yelling in his ear, but Eliot ignored him, couldn't spare a single thought on letting the other man know what was going on. The guard was moving again, and Eliot saw the knife in the man's hand a split second before he was coming at him. He jumped to the side and reached for the hand holding the knife. But the guard's momentum was too strong, and while the knife missed, the punch the guard delivered with his other hand didn't.

Eliot didn't see it coming, and for a moment his vision exploded in bright flashes as the fist struck his jaw and snapped his head to the side. The blow split his lip, Eliot could feel the blood run over his mouth and down his chin, but he didn't waste a single thought on it. As long as an injury wasn't bad enough to keep him from fighting, it could be dealt with later.

The guard managed to get another punch in, a single-minded jab at Eliot's solar plexus that didn't hit with its full intended force. It still knocked the wind out of Eliot for a second, but despite the pain and breathlessness Eliot shifted his weight and delivered a hard kick to the back of the guard's knee. He hit the leg at an angle, and the guard's cry of pain as his knee gave out told Eliot that this guy wasn't going to get up anytime soon. Not on that leg.

It was impossible to see clearly in this darkness, but Eliot relied blindly on sound and that instinctive sense where his opponent was that came from years of fighting like this. One more blow to the temple, and guard number two was out for the count.

Panting, Eliot straightened up again. Distantly, he noticed that Nate's voice in his ear had fallen silent, and in his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of the open door on the other side of the warehouse. It was a relief that Hardison had gotten out, but the relief was short-lived. From out of nowhere, something struck hard against the back of his head, and Eliot found himself stumbling forward, his vision blurring as pain exploded in the back of his head.

Eliot stumbled forward, but spun around to face his new attacker. There were shouts in the background, barked commands he barely registered beyond the knowledge that the other two guards must have arrived at the office.

Eliot stopped thinking and let his instincts take over. Spinning around, he delivered a hard blow with his elbow to the ribs of the guy who had just attacked him, quickly followed by a hard punch to the side of the guard's jaw. He sensed more than saw or heard the fourth of the guards come up behind him, and survival instincts took over. Two guards were still standing against him before he could even think about following Hardison to the car, and he needed to get them down before they thought about turning on the light, or got him into a position where they could pull their guns on him.

A hard head butt made his newest attacker stumble back, long enough for Eliot to get a kick into his stomach in, but then the other guard came at him again. Eliot felt a fierce pain in his left shoulder, as he was suddenly thrown forward, and it was only instinct that made him duck and dodge the next blow.

He no longer even knew where his single attackers were. Two were permanently down, but the other two didn't make it as easy for him.

He kicked and punched whenever he sensed or heard one of them coming at him, but in the darkness of the warehouse it was hard to deal with more than one attacker at once. He had no peripheral vision to rely on as a split-second warning, and the two got a lot more punches through than they would have under different conditions. It was only his hearing that served him as a warning, and over the sound of his own rapid breathing it was getting harder and harder to be sure of where the two guards were.

Suddenly his left arm was gripped and twisted violently behind his back and an arm closed around his throat, pressing against his windpipe. Eliot twisted and tried to get out of the man's hold on him, when suddenly the overhead lights in the warehouse went on. The abrupt flare of light blinded Eliot painfully, but it also came as a surprise for the man who was holding him. The arm around Eliot's throat loosened just enough for him to snap his head back violently.

The crunch of bone and the sharp cry of pain more than made up for the throbbing agony in the base of Eliot's skull, and he lost no time in bringing the heel of his boot down hard on the man's instep. Eliot spun around to deliver a blow that would knock the man out for good, but was stopped by the sudden press of a cold metal barrel against his back.

"I think it's time for you to surrender."

Eliot was still blinking against the glaring lights, but he froze at the feeling of a gun being pressed against his back, and at the sound of steps calmly approaching him. The room was lit now, which meant the tables had turned. Time for a reassessment.

One guard was lying unmoving on the floor, the other a few feet away was holding his knee and whimpering slightly. To Eliot's right, the third one was cursing a blue streak, blood running out of his shattered nose. But the fourth one was still standing, his gun now pressed against Eliot's head from the side.

The voice that had spoken however, belonged to Raymond Berger who was slowly coming towards Eliot, arms clasped behind his back and a smile on his face.

Eliot tried to keep a smile of his own from his face. These odds he could deal with. The gun against his head didn't scare him, and now that he was able to rely on his vision again he was sure that he could take the one remaining guard out. The other one was far too busy with his broken nose than to pose a serious threat, and while Eliot was sure that Berger was armed, too, he was also sure that compared to those guards he didn't pose a serious threat.

No, surrender was definitely not an option he was contemplating.

Eliot's left arm was hurting, but it was only a muscle pull from the unexpected movement. His knuckles were abraded, his split lip was still bleeding, the right side of his face was pulsing and his torso would be an assortment of bruises come tomorrow, but considering that he had been up against four opponents he was still in good shape. None of his injuries was going to impair him in any way.

It would take a lot more than a few bumps and bruises to even make him consider surrender.

Berger looked at him for a few long seconds, then the smile on his face grew wider. He snapped his fingers and turned towards the door that led to the office. Eliot followed the man's gaze, and then suddenly all his plans about how to proceed went out the window.

Berger's bodyguard came into the warehouse. The man had his hands fisted into the back of Hardison's t-shirt and was pushing the computer expert in the room in front of him. A few steps into the room he stopped with a jerk, his gun pressed firmly into the flesh underneath Hardison's jaw.

Hardison cast an apologetic glance at Eliot, but there was nothing either of them could do about it now. The younger man was bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow, which told Eliot that he hadn't gone down without a fight. That was all he could have asked for. The rest was just shitty luck.

But Hardison's presence changed things. Eliot could take out the guy with the gun to his own head without any problem at all, but there was no way he could take out the bodyguard too before he could fire a shot.

And Berger knew it. The grin on his face widened and he raised an eyebrow at Eliot, but he didn't repeat his question. He didn't need to. They both knew he had won this round. Eliot looked the man straight in the eye, and he forced his voice to sound as defiant as possible.

"All right, you win. I give up."

* * *

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

**TBC...**

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

* * *

Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	3. Treading Water

Here you go with the next chapter. Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter 2**** – Treading Water**

"All right, you win. I give up."

The words tasted like bile in Eliot's mouth, but it wasn't as if he had any other choice. Not with a gun to Hardison's head. He needed to wait for the opportune moment to turn the tables in their favor again.

"_Eliot!_" Nate's voice sounded in his ear. "_What is going on?_"

He needed to let Nate know what had happened, but without telling him directly. For as long as Berger didn't know about the rest of the team, at least they could hold up communication. So Eliot ignored Nate's voice in his ear, and turned his attention on Berger.

"There, I give up. Now tell your bodyguard to stand down and take his gun away from my partner's head."

Berger just laughed, and Eliot hadn't really thought his words were going to have any effect. At least now Nate knew what was going on. Before Berger could respond anything the second remaining guard suddenly came into Eliot's line of vision, his face a pained grimace. Blood was still running out of his shattered nose, and his eyes were dark with anger. Eliot only got a split second warning before the guard's fist buried itself in his stomach. Despite the advance warning, the blow knocked the wind out of him and he couldn't help but double over.

The blow he had anticipated and tensed his stomach muscles against, but there was nothing Eliot could do against the knee the guard rammed into his side. There was no way for him to ride with the force of the blow, and pain flared up in Eliot's side as the guard's knee smashed into his ribs. He felt something give, a shift and groan of bones as they were forced into a direction they weren't supposed to move into.

His own muffled grunt of pain drowned out Nate's voice over his earpiece asking what was going on. Distantly he heard Hardison yell something, and inwardly he was yelling at the other man to keep his mouth shut. He knew how to take a blow, even if it cracked a rib or two. And for as long as the guards were focusing on him, Hardison was safe.

A hand roughly gripped his shoulder, holding him down in that doubled over position, and Eliot tensed for the next blow to his injured ribs when Berger's voice rang through the haze in his head.

"Vaughn!"

The grip on Eliot's shoulder eased, and the guard behind him pulled him into an upright position again. Eliot bit his lip to keep another groan from escaping as the abrupt movement tore even more at his left side. It took a moment for him to focus on Berger, but the man wasn't looking at him. Instead he was glaring at the guard who had just punched him.

"Get a grip on yourself, Vaughn."

"Yeah Vaughn," Eliot pressed out from behind clenched teeth. "Get a grip on yourself."

Vaughn spun around and slammed his fist into Eliot's stomach again, knocking the air out of him and forcing another pained groan from Eliot's lips because this time the second guard held him so tight that he didn't even have the chance to bend over and alleviate some of the pain.

"Enough!" Berger yelled sharply, and with a dissatisfied grunt Vaughn took a step back from Eliot. Berger stepped closer to Eliot, head cocked to the side.

"You shouldn't have broken his nose, you know? He really doesn't like it when that happens."

Eliot laughed without any real amusement. "Then he should learn how to fight when nobody's there to hold his opponent down for him."

From the corner of his eye, Eliot saw Vaughn take a step into his direction, but Berger merely raised a hand without taking his eyes off of Eliot. Vaughn stopped immediately. The guard might have a temper, but the chain of command seemed to be clear. Good to know.

Berger stepped forward so that he was directly in front of Eliot, even though he took deliberate care to stay well out of Eliot's physical range. The man wasn't stupid, but Eliot hadn't thought he was going to be. Between Fuentes and him, Berger was the brains of the outfit.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my warehouse?"

Interesting choice of words, seeing that from all the information they had, Fuentes was the one who owned all the business. Berger merely was the one who ran things. It seemed that Berger himself had a slightly different take on things, which was a piece of knowledge that might come in handy later on. Right now, however, he had no intention to tell Berger anything about who they were and what they had been doing.

The problem was, he wasn't alone in this. If it was only him, they could stay here all night and Berger wasn't going to be any wiser about his identity or intention. But there was still Hardison. And Eliot knew that Berger wasn't stupid. Eliot had surrendered the moment they had put a gun to Hardison's head. If they didn't get the answers they wanted out of him, they would go for Hardison again.

No, he needed a story that would buy them some time. Time to get out of the warehouse, to turn the tables in their favor again. And time for Nate to maybe figure out a way to lend a helping hand from the outside. Eliot had no doubt that when it came to the crunch, he'd be able to get himself and Hardison out of this, even if it was going to be messy. But he had learned an important lesson since working together with Nate and the others – he wasn't stupid enough to say no when one of his team members came up with an easier way out. And for that to happen, they needed to stall.

"I asked you a question. You'd better answer it."

"_Give him something vague, Eliot._"

Now that was a remark Eliot wasn't exactly grateful for. He hadn't needed Nate's input to come to this decision. With Berger standing in the way there was no way for Eliot to inconspicuously catch Hardison's eye. He could only hope the other man was going to play along.

"Not everybody is excited about your latest business ventures."

Berger's face didn't betray much at that statement, but the flicker of his eyes towards the office where the cocaine was stashed was telling enough. Berger took a step towards Eliot.

"Who are you working for?"

Eliot didn't say anything, and made an effort of looking directly at Berger. It wouldn't help him to throw a name out there anyway, even if he had known which gangs were running the drug business here in San Diego. And Eliot was too experienced to give Berger all the answers he wanted immediately. He needed to stall, and for as long as Berger thought there was still information they had, they hadn't outlived their usefulness. Berger held his gaze.

"I'm only going to ask one more time, then I will turn around and look the other way while Vaughn gets the answers out of you. Who send you here, and what were you doing?"

Eliot didn't particularly fancy another round with Vaughn, not for as long as two guns were pointed at Hardison and him. And not with a cracked rib or two. He forced himself to laugh at Berger.

"What, you thought you'd just start in the smack business and nobody would notice? It's not exactly an open niche here in town."

Berger's eyes shifted left and right nervously before they settled on Eliot again.

"Who sent you?"

Eliot shrugged, as much as the guard's hold on him would allow.

"If you can't guess that on your own, me giving you a name won't help you either."

Berger's lip curled and he drew breath to say something, but at that moment there were steps in the office and a voice called out.

"Mr. Berger?"

Another guard came walking into the warehouse, face flushed and breathing hard as if he had run to get here. In one hand, he was holding a laptop. Berger turned towards him.

"What did you find?"

"They must have looped the feed of the security cameras somehow, that's why we didn't see them come in on the monitors. Their car is parked just outside the fence. We searched it, but there was nothing in it but this."

He handed the laptop over to Berger, who took it with a stunned frown. "No weapons?"

The guard shook his head. "No sir. Absolutely nothing."

"All right, get back to your post."

The guard nodded and turned around, but Eliot wasn't looking at him. With the guards' and Berger's attention momentarily distracted, he was looking straight at Hardison. It took a moment for the computer expert to catch his gaze, and only when Hardison gave a barely perceptible shake of his head did Eliot allow himself to relax a little. Without Hardison, they weren't going to find anything incriminating on that laptop. One less thing to worry about.

After the guard left, Berger took a look around the warehouse, the two guards that were still lying on the ground in different states of unconsciousness, then he nodded at the two guards who were still standing.

"All right, we'll take them with us."

"Why bother?" Vaughn fell in. "They're not going to tell anything. We can just as well end it right here."

Berger spun around and pointed a finger at Vaughn. "Did that blow knock something loose up there? Because if it did, you'd better turn around and walk away right now, Vaughn. I say we take them with us, and that's what we're going to do. What do you want to do, shoot them here and leave a nice blood trail right where everyone can find it? I was told you were clever when I hired you."

Berger shook his head and turned towards his bodyguard, who was still holding Hardison by the back of his shirt and had his gun pressed into the flesh underneath Hardison's jaw.

"You and Hernandez take them out to the van while I call Hector. Vaughn, you take care of these two," he nodded towards the unconscious and injured guard on the ground. "If you have to take them to the hospital, you'd better make up a credible story that has no cop snooping around here, do you understand me? And then make sure that the warehouse is locked up again, and I want two guards on each of the doors until the shipment is picked up, did I make myself clear?"

Vaughn looked as if he had swallowed a lemon, but he nodded. "Of course."

"Good." Berger nodded. "All right, get them out of here."

He pointed towards the door, and Eliot felt the guard behind him nudge him non-too gently into the direction of the door. Eliot had no choice but to follow, but his mind was racing. If those guys moved them somewhere, it was going to get harder for Nate and the others to find them. Hardison had mentioned once how it was possible to locate the transmitters in their earpieces, but truth be told Eliot had no idea whether anybody but the tech expert had any idea how to do that.

No, if they were brought out of the warehouse and to another location somewhere, it was going to complicate matters. So if there was any chance to stop that from happening, Eliot was going to take it. The odds weren't too bad, with Berger on the phone and Vaughn thoroughly rebuked and by now quite a distance away tending to one of the injured guards, it were only two people he had to take out.

Definitely odds he could beat, even with a pounding headache from the earlier head butt and some possibly cracked ribs on his left side. It would be easy, really, if it weren't for the gun to Hardison's head.

And then they made a mistake.

Busy pushing Hardison out of the room, the bodyguard had his back turned towards Eliot. The guard pushing Eliot along took great care to keep the gun pressed to Eliot's head and his grip on Eliot's jacket was tight, but he didn't seem all that bothered to keep a distance between their two captives. Just a few steps, and Eliot found himself within striking distance of the bodyguard, and more importantly, of the gun pressed to Hardison's head.

Eliot's reaction was instinctive, and too fast for either of the two armed men to stop.

Eliot shot forward, right arm lashing forward towards the bodyguard's gun. The guy was all muscle, but thing about muscle was that it only helped if you were prepared for what was coming at you. The bodyguard wasn't prepared when Eliot grabbed his wrist and snapped it around, hard. Eliot felt something snap underneath his fingers, and the gun clattered to the ground from the bodyguard's suddenly lax grip.

As his hand shot out, Eliot twisted in his own captor's grasp, jerking his head away from the gun and lashing out with his foot.

"Hardison, run!"

He couldn't look whether the other man followed his sudden and unexpected command. Eliot simply had to rely that Hardison made a run for it, he didn't have any attention to spare. If he wanted to get both of them out of here, he had to get these two guys down, fast.

He rammed an elbow into the guard's stomach, foot going down hard on the man's instep, but as he lashed out to knock the man out he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He slammed his fist hard into the side of the guard's head, but as he spun around to face the approaching bodyguard he felt his stomach sink as he saw that the man was still having a good grip on Hardison's shirt, holding the other man so tightly by the collar that the fabric was cutting into his neck.

Eliot lunged, fist going unerringly for the side of the bodyguard's neck in hopes of knocking him out with a precise blow, but before he could deliver it his vision suddenly exploded in bright flashes. The last thing he was fuzzily aware of was Berger stepping into his line of vision, a gun held by the barrel in his hand and a sneer on his face. Eliot struggled to cling to consciousness, but Berger lifted his arm once more, and before Eliot could do anything to stop it the butt of the gun soared towards his face again. Pain exploded behind his eyes, then everything turned dark.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Nate was pressing his fingers against the earpiece, knowing that it was a futile gesture but hoping against hope that he was going to hear something, anything really, that would give him a clearer picture of what was going on in that warehouse.

His surprise at Eliot's surrender had been short-lived, he had understood as soon as Eliot had told their opponents to take the gun away from Hardison's head. If they were threatening the other man with a gun and Eliot surrendered, it meant that he was in no position to do something about it before the guy holding the gun pulled the trigger. Nate knew that Eliot had said the words for his benefit so that he knew what was going on, and not because he thought the command was going to make them take the gun away.

Nate trusted Eliot to keep the situation under control and get both him and Hardison out there safely, but that didn't help the tight knot of helpless anticipation that formed in his stomach. They were _his_ team, it was _his_ plan, and ultimately it was his responsibility to make sure that they all got out of this alive and unharmed. Being unable to do anything for them was driving him mad.

And while listening to the sound of Eliot fighting with the guards had been bad, listening in to Berger's interrogation was even worse. He hadn't been able to do much but give Eliot the advise to stall Berger, and he knew that it hadn't been a helpful suggestion. Eliot was experienced enough to know that on his own, but Nate had felt the need to say _something_, no matter how helpful it was or wasn't.

Nate wasn't surprised by how quickly Eliot adapted to the new situation. Or by the fact that he was talking about drugs in street slang without needing any pointers. Nate had stopped being surprised about Eliot a long time ago, around the time he had witnessed that the man knew how to use a knife for something other than cutting through people.

And Nate knew that Eliot was being as cocky as he was to divert attention from Hardison, but that didn't make listening to his suppressed grunts of pain as he was punched any more bearable.

The back door to the van suddenly opened, but Nate barely spared more than a glance to the back as Sophie and Parker climbed into the car. Sophie was struggling a bit with her dress and high-heeled shoes, but after one failed attempt at climbing into the car without doing herself physical damage she discarded the shoes and threw them in the back of the van.

"Nate, what's going on?" Sophie asked as she moved closer to him.

"The night guards caught Eliot and Hardison. We need to get to the warehouse. Parker, you drive."

Parker cast Nate a confused look as she moved past him to climb into the driver's seat of the van.

"The guards caught them? Can't Eliot just…you know, punch them?"

"They have a gun to Hardison's head."

Parker stopped, halfway into the seat, and seemed to deliberate that statement for a moment. "Oh," was all she said before she settled in the seat and started the engine. "So what are we going to do?"

"We're going to the warehouse. They want to move them somewhere else, we need to be there when that happens."

Parker pulled the van out of its parking space and back towards the road. In the back, Sophie stumbled slightly at the movement and settled down so that she was facing Nate.

"But they're all right, right?"

Nate shrugged. "I think so. Eliot took out two of the guards, and they roughed him up a little, but he would have let me know if he or Hardison were seriously hurt in any way. We only need to get them out of there, then we'll see."

"And how exactly are we going to do that?"

Nate was about to admit that he had no idea yet when suddenly there was a sudden sound over the earpiece. A dull smack and a groan, followed by Eliot's rough yell.

"_Hardison, run!_"

Nate felt his pulse speed up. "I think maybe Eliot might have found a way."

Nate listened with bated breath to the sounds of a renewed scuffle coming over the earpiece, and next to him Sophie was doing the same. Parker, too, probably, although Nate sincerely hoped that she had at least some of her attention focused on driving.

For a few seconds, grunts and dull smacks were the only things coming over the audio feed in their earpieces, but then Eliot suddenly gave a sharp grown and the connection fell silent.

Nate stiffened, and beside him he heard Sophie give a startled gasp.

"Eliot? What's going on? Hardison? Someone tell me what's going on!"

"_Eliot's out, they pistol-whipped him_," Hardison said, and Nate couldn't help but flinch. Their tech expert was completely out of his element, and seeing Eliot knocked down in front of his eyes had probably come as a shock. Normally Hardison knew better than to break their cover by talking to him directly, but now he had. And all of Nate's hopes that it might have gone unnoticed were smashed about a second later.

"_Who were you talking to?_"

"Damn," Nate mumbled, knowing that they were blown. The earpieces were the only connection they had left to their two team members, and if those were about to be discovered…

"_Me? I…nobody._"

It wasn't convincing, and it didn't have Berger's men fooled for a second.

"_Boss, he's wearing an earpiece._"

It was the voice of the bodyguard, followed a few seconds later by the voice of one of the other guards.

"_Yeah, this one too._"

"_Get rid of them,_" Berger fell in. "_Then get them into the van and wait for me. I've got a phone call to make._"

"No, no, no!" Nate mumbled, but he couldn't do anything as those last statements were followed by a few beats of silence, then the painful screech of feedback as one of the earpieces was destroyed. Nate flinched, one hand going up to his ear as the shrill tone pierced his eardrums, but before he even had the chance to take out the device, a second shrill feedback marked the destruction of the second earpiece.

Nate let his head drop against the side of the van with a dull thud.

They now no longer had any way to communicate with either Hardison or Eliot, let alone a way to find out where they were and what was happening to them.

They were so screwed.

* * *

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

**TBC...**

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

* * *

Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	4. A Fish out of Water

Here's the next chapter for you all. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 3 – A Fish Out Of Water**

The world was shaking, and Eliot was fairly sure that it wasn't supposed to do that. Not shaking really, more like swaying. That was the first thing that penetrated through the haze in Eliot's mind. The next was that his head was pounding fiercely, his whole body hurt, and he had the feeling that there was something important that he had forgotten. A sharp stinging slap to his left cheek threw his head to the side against something hard and metallic, and with a groan Eliot blinked his eyes open.

Everything was a little blurry and out of focus – some back part of his brain informed him that he very likely had a concussion – but Eliot ignored that for now and blinked hard a couple of times until things became clearer. Not that he liked what he saw, or the memories that came attached with it. The face of Hector Fuentes was looming in front of him, sneering when he saw how Eliot was about to wake up. Eliot had never seen the man in person, but they had done enough recon on him that he had no doubt as to who it was in front of him.

Eliot's reaction was instinctive. He didn't even waste a thought about where he was, or what had happened since his memory blackened out, his head immediately snapped forward as he tried to lunge at the man.

But his hands were held tightly behind his back, and the force of his movement tore at his shoulders and sent a spike of agony down his left side that robbed him of his breath. Panting, Eliot sank back against the wall behind him, painfully reminded about the earlier abuse his ribs had suffered. They didn't feel broken, but were probably cracked if they were still hurting like that.

Fuentes chuckled and got up from his crouching position in front of Eliot.

"Don't bother trying to get free, you're tied up pretty well. Now, since you were kind enough to finally wake up again, maybe you want to fill me in on what you were doing in my warehouse. Unfortunately, your partner refused to say anything on that matter."

Eliot's head snapped up and he immediately started searching the room. It was testament to how knocked out he had been that it hadn't been his first course of action after regaining consciousness. He hadn't been alone when he had been captured, his first course of action should have been to try and find out where Hardison was.

It seemed Fuentes had brought him to a small storage room. At least there were shelves and cupboards on the walls opposite him and to his left that suggested that was what the room was used for. The room was small and cramped, maybe two by three feet, if that, and that didn't include the shelf-space. But for now Eliot didn't waste much thought on where he was and what the room was normally used for, his eyes kept scanning the room until they finally settled on Hardison.

The other man was sitting against the wall to Eliot's right, lodged between a shelf and the corner of the room. Judged by the pipes that ran out from behind his head and the uncomfortable way his arms seemed pulled behind his back, Fuentes' men had probably tied him up against those. Eliot felt a similar set of metal pipes press into his own back, his hands tied up uncomfortably around them.

Hardison was awake and looking at him, and he seemed worse off than the last time Eliot had seen him. Before, he had only suffered from a bleeding cut above one eyebrow. Now his lip was split, and there was significant swelling around his left eye, too. But Fuentes had said that Hardison hadn't told them anything, that at least was something. It didn't help the feeling that Eliot wanted to slap himself for getting knocked out like that. It had been his job to get Hardison out of that warehouse, or at least make sure that these guys had somebody else to focus their anger on than the computer expert. Somebody who knew how to take it.

Eliot raised an eyebrow at Hardison, and got a small nod of the man's head in return. They weren't experts in silent communication, but Eliot took it as a sign that the other man was unharmed, even if he had been roughed up. Bad enough, but they had to deal with that now. And for as long as Nate and the others were still listening in, there was a chance they'd find a way out of here. The light in the room came from a single light bulb on the ceiling, but judged by the little natural light that came in through the small porthole high in one wall, it was early morning, around daybreak. He had been knocked out longer than he had thought.

Eliot turned his head and looked back at Fuentes.

"What, you want me to answer your questions?"

Fuentes shrugged nonchalantly, although Eliot wasn't paying much attention to the man's body-language. With men like Fuentes, Eliot had learned that staring them right in the eye was the best course of action to disconcert them. Also, people most often betrayed when they were lying in their eyes, not in any other way.

"If you care about your life, and your friend's life, this is your last chance to tell me who you are, who sent you and what you were doing in my warehouse."

Eliot smiled. "Oh, and if I tell you all about that, you'll just let us go? Right. just spare us the small-talk, why don't you?"

Fuentes' eyebrows went up, but his eyes remained hard and cold.

"You don't seem to care much for your friend's life. Or for your own."

"First of all, he's not my friend. Just to make that clear once and for all." From the corner of his eye, Eliot saw Hardison shift slightly at those words, but he didn't glance over at the other man. He was calling the shots for as long as they were in this situation, and there would always be time for explanations later.

"And secondly, you're not going to let either of us go, no matter what I tell you. So, you can go punch me some more, or go a few more rounds with him, but since you're going to kill us anyway you can as well spare yourself the effort."

Fuentes struck fast.

There was just a flicker in his eyes that betrayed the movement, then Eliot felt his head snap to the side, cheek colliding painfully with the cold metal of the wall he was tied to. It hadn't been a knockout blow, far from it. Fuentes wasn't the kind of guy to make his own hands dirty, and while Eliot had no doubt that he had at least one man more than capable of physical violence standing outside the door, he also doubted that Fuentes was going to call the man in. This was a show off of strength, and with both Eliot and Hardison tied down, Fuentes would be stupid to call in someone else to do the dirty work for him. It would be a sign of weakness. And a guy like Fuentes was too clever to show weakness in front of someone like Eliot.

Fuentes got up and shook his head, as if what he was about to do saddened him greatly.

"This is all on you, then. You've had your chance. But I guess whoever sent you to spy on me, if you don't show up anymore it will be a lesson to them not to mess with me any further."

He turned and left the small room, the sound of metal against metal ringing loudly through the room as the door closed behind him. Eliot relaxed the tension in his shoulders a little now that Fuentes was gone, registering all the pains and aches from various parts of his body for a second. His head was still pounding, his left side was stinging with every deep breath he took, and the blow against his face had torn his split lip open again. Blood was running over his mouth and down his chin, but all things considered it wasn't so bad.

Eliot turned to look at Hardison.

"You okay?"

The other man nodded, although there was a frown on his face that didn't vanish even as he answered.

"I'm good. They roughed me up a little, but it was nothing I couldn't take."

Eliot seriously doubted that. Hardison was completely out of his element and his comfort zone here. But if whatever was holding him together now would last until they were out of here, that was enough. Now they only needed a plan.

"Nate, you heard all that?"

There was only silence, no voice answering back over his earpiece, and Eliot shook his head slightly, as if that would help establish communication.

"Nate!"

"Yeah, about that…"

Eliot turned back towards Hardison. "What?"  
"They found the earpieces and destroyed them."

Hardison sounded resigned, but his words didn't make sense to Eliot. It was extremely hard to find those earpieces if you weren't looking for them specifically.

"How?"

Resignation turned into obvious discomfort as Hardison shifted slightly, as much as his bonds allowed him.

"They heard me talking to Nate."

"What?"

"You heard me." Hardison rolled his eyes. "I talked to Nate, they figured out that we were communicating with someone else. That's how they found the earpieces."

Eliot still didn't want to believe what he was hearing.

"Why the hell would you break cover and talk directly to Nate? You must have known that Berger was going to guess something was up if you did."

"I didn't think, okay?" Eliot was sure that Hardison would have thrown up his hands had they not been tied. "I have no idea how things work in your world, but I'm not used to seeing people beating unconscious right in front of my eyes! You might be used to bodies littering your way, but I don't normally get chased down by huge bodyguards and then watch a wannabe drug dealer knock out a friend right in front of my eyes. It happened too fast, Nate was yelling in my ear, asking what was going on, and I answered. I didn't think, it was a mistake."  
Eliot let his head sink back against the metal of the wall. Yeah, it had been a mistake, but not one he could really blame Hardison for. The other man was on the team to deal with all their technical problems, not to handle himself in situations like the one they had ended up in. That was Eliot's job, and it seemed he had screwed this one up pretty good.

Once they were out of here, he should maybe do something to remedy that, give Hardison some pointers on the real-life ugliness of crime that happened outside of a computer screen. But for now, they needed to get out of here. Fuentes had stashed them away on one of his boats, that much wasn't too hard to guess from the layout of the storage room, the metal walls and the gentle swaying. From their research they knew that the man had a number of boats, but Eliot would bet good money that they weren't tied up on one of his two yachts. So they probably weren't in the same marina where the party Sophie had attended had taken place.

Suddenly the gentle rocking of the boat beneath them stopped as the entire frame vibrated with the starting engines.

"Oh, come on!"

Eliot raised an eyebrow at Hardison's outburst. "What, you thought they were going to keep us tied up in a docked boat where everybody can find us, Hardison? We need to get out of here."

"I really agree with you. But you seem to forget about one tiny little detail here."

"Oh yeah?" Eliot shifted around slightly, grimacing as the movement tore at his cracked ribs. "And what is that?"

"We're tied up here!" Hardison yelled, jerking forward as if to emphasize his point. "And I don't know if you're the great Houdini, but my hands are tied pretty tightly."

Eliot smiled, as much to cover up the pain as in amusement at Hardison's words as his fingers felt around the pipe in search of what exactly was holding his hands bound to the pipe. It was hard to feel anything, there wasn't much movement left to his hands and no matter how much he wriggled, the bindings didn't loosen. But it was obvious soon enough that it weren't handcuffs he was bound up with. Cable ties of some sort, flexi-cuffs maybe. Ah well. Nothing was ever easy, but things definitely weren't as dire as Hardison thought they were.

"Take this as a lesson, Hardison."

"What? If you're stupid enough to agree to break into a drug lord's warehouse at night, you're going to end up handcuffed on a boat? Thanks a lot, I think I got this one."

"That's not what I meant." Eliot interrupted himself with a suppressed groan as he started to move around again, trying to arrange his limbs into the order he needed them in.

"If you tie up somebody, make sure that it's not only the lateral movement you impair."

And while it was true that the plastic cuffs held his hands pretty tightly and prevented him from moving them to either side, he had just enough room to slide them up and down the metal pipe he was cuffed to. And that meant he could move up and down as well.

Of course, moving in any direction meant sharp pain all the way down his left side, but right now he needed to get them out of here. And for that he had to move, so there really was no discussion about it.

"Lateral move…are you kidding me? I can't move a frigging millimeter here."

"Not to the side, Hardison. But if some amateur ties you to a pipe, that means you can move up and down."

"Hallelujah! We're tied up in a boat, with a bunch of thugs who want to kill us, but at least we can still bounce! Why didn't you say so earlier?"

Eliot smiled, but he was too focused on shifting his body and avoiding as much pain as possible while he moved. Lifting himself up, he managed to get his left leg underneath him. Slowly, he lowered himself down again so that he came to sit on his boot. The position was awkward, not to mention uncomfortable, but as he slowly lowered himself down again he started shifting back towards the wall.

Moving up had been painful enough, but moving down was even worse. Eliot had to stretch, but he needed to be able to reach his boot with his hands. Normally that movement wouldn't have been a problem, but the pipe didn't leave him much room to maneuver, and he had to stretch out his chest and bend his head at a weird angle until his fingers finally made contact with the heel of his boot.

"See?" Eliot grunted out from between clenched teeth. "If you want to stop someone from doing this, you tie them up properly."

There was a moment of silence, and while Eliot couldn't see Hardison in his current position, he could only too well imagine the look on the other man's face.

"Right." Hardison said after another second or two. "You know, I'm a supporter of healthy living, I really am. The whole _my body is a temple_ thing? I really dig that. But to be frank with you, I have no idea how any of that yoga crap is going to help us right now. Unless you can go into some sort of yogi-trance that will give you superhuman powers to break through those ties."

Eliot laughed at that, though he should have known better. Laughing sent spikes of agony down his left side, and after a second the laughter turned into a groan.

"You all right, man?"

"I'm fine," Eliot ground out, even though he knew that the tone of his voice belied the statement. There was nothing he could do about that now, anyway, and it would get better once he got those restraints off.

"So, if it's not yoga, what the hell are you doing there?"

"Cutting through the restraints."

Eliot thought it would have been obvious, actually. He most certainly wouldn't bend himself into such an awkward position just for the fun of it, not with cracked ribs.

"If it's your boot knife you're looking for, they took that earlier. After they found the earpieces, they frisked us pretty good."

Eliot only smiled. Good probably, but he would bet that they hadn't frisked them good enough. He had resources that weren't this easy to find.

"'s not the knife I'm looking for."

"What, you got other things hidden in your boots? Dude, aren't you ever worried someone's gonna find that? I hear airport security is pretty tight these days."

"Why do you think I have an Air Marshal badge?"

Eliot shifted some more, and finally his fingers could reach the place where the sole of his boot met the heel. And there was the little metallic edge he had been looking for, barely visible amidst the thick stitch of thread that ran around the entire edge of the boot. It was a small piece of razorblade Eliot had lodged into the sole of his boot for just that purpose, its outer edge dull and bent slightly, just enough so that he could grip it even with his short fingernails.

Eliot really would have preferred had it been metal handcuffs. Getting out of those would have been easier, and trying to cut through these plastic cuffs with the small blade and with limited range of movement was going to get messy.

Hardison seemed to get nervous by Eliot's prolonged silence.

"What are you doing?"  
"Just…give me a second."

Eliot didn't have any energy or attention to spare to the other man right now. If the small blade slipped out of his fingers, things were going to get difficult. And if his attention strayed, he would end up cutting himself.

Once the blade was free, Eliot shifted again, moving his leg out from underneath him and stretching it out again. It took some of the strain off his ribs, even though pins and needles were already running through his leg from the cramped position he had forced it into earlier.

Moving the blade in his fingers was tricky. Eliot couldn't see what he was doing, he had to rely on his sense of touch alone. The blade was short, but with a little careful shifting Eliot could bring the blade up against the plastic tie holding his hands together. A sharp pain ran through his right thumb as he applied pressure to the blade, but Eliot ignored it and kept on pushing the razor into the plastic. He couldn't saw through it, there wasn't enough room for the movement, so brute force would have to do. Even if it meant that the other side of the blade cut into his thumb.

Eliot grit his teeth and pushed a little harder, pulling his wrists apart at the same time. For a moment the ties held up, but then the blade cut through the plastic and his wrists were free. Eliot dropped the blade, but he didn't really care about that for a few seconds as he immediately stuck his thumb into his mouth, sucking at the deep cut in his finger. Hardison's head perked up as he saw that Eliot was free of his bonds now, but it took a few moments for Eliot to sort through his various pains and injuries before he was able to react.

"How did you do that?"

Eliot forced a smile, taking his thumb out of his mouth and pressing down hard on the cut with his index finger. The blade had fallen to the ground behind him, and Eliot picked it up again before he slowly got back to his feet. All the moving around hadn't been too good for his injured ribs, but he knew from experience that a little rest and some painkillers would take care of that. Later.

The small piece of blade in hand, Eliot took a moment to gather himself, then he walked over towards where Hardison was sitting. The other man's eyes bulged in what would have been a comical way in any other situation when he saw the bloodied razorblade in Eliot's fingers.

"Dude, you're not…"

"Lean forward."

Hardison shook his head emphatically. "You know what? I think I'll just take…"

"Lean forward or I'll lean you forward."

Hardison seemed to contemplate that statement for a second, then he hesitantly leaned a slight bit away from the wall. Eliot stepped up towards him and, seeing that the gap between Hardison's back and the wall wasn't big enough, put a hand between the other man's shoulder blades and pushed him away from the wall.

"Hey!" Hardison protested, his voice muffled as his upper body was leaning towards his legs, but Eliot didn't really have time to consider comfort right now. And if Hardison thought these few seconds were uncomfortable, he should try getting out of the plastic cuffs with cracked ribs and tied hands. Once Hardison did that, he had earned the right to complain.

From this position, and with actual room to move the blade while he cut, not to mention that he could see what he was doing this time, cutting through the plastic ties took only a couple of seconds until the plastic gave way and Hardison brought his hands up in front of him, frantically rubbing at his wrists.

As much as Eliot could sympathize with how Hardison wanted to enjoy his newfound freedom of movement, they didn't have time for this. The boat had left he harbor not too long ago, there was still a chance for them to get off. But they had to move fast. Eliot put a hand on Hardison's arm and tugged him up.

"Come on, we need to get moving."

Hardison stumbled to his feet. "What are we going to do now?"

"We need to get off this boat. Right now they think we're still tied up in here, so we need to get out before they realize we're free. We're below deck, so we need to get up on deck and go off board. It's early morning, there should be other boats out there this close to the harbor. If we're lucky, they won't notice we're gone before it's too late. If not, maybe they'll hesitate to shoot at us if there's other boats around."

Eliot walked over towards the door and checked the lock. It wasn't too sturdy and he should be able to open it without much effort. He heard Hardison step up to him as he inspected the door.

"What exactly do you mean, we have to go off board? Like, take a lifeboat?"

Eliot laughed. "Not if we don't want to draw attention to ourselves. We need to be quick about this, Hardison. And we can't be too far away from the harbor yet. How good a swimmer are you?"

It was an off-handed question, just a reassurance about Hardison's skill while Eliot was still focused on the lock. But when there was no answer, Eliot straightened up and turned around.

"Hardison?"

The other man looked back at him with an uncomfortable expression on his face.

"I don't swim, man."  
They really didn't have time for that discussion right now. "It's not really a question of principle here, Hardison. Around us there's water, you will have to swim, whether you like it or not."

Hardison remained silent, but there was an expression on his face that made something heavy settle in Eliot's stomach. It couldn't be. On top of everything that had happened, it just couldn't be. He shook his head, willing Hardison to tell him that he had just misunderstood.

"Please don't tell me that you can't swim."

* * *

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

**TBC...**

*Leverage*Leverage*Leverage*

* * *

Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	5. Testing the Water

Sorry for the long delay. Real life got so busy, I got a new job and had another story to wrap up before I could focus my mind on this one again. But I promise I haven't forgotten about it, and will keep working hard to get the next update out quicker.

Huge thanks have to go out to windscryer who let me bug her with all my questions concerning nautical stuff. There would have been a lot less coherency here without her, and if still some mistakes managed to find their way into this chapter, she is free of blame.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 4 – ****Testing the Water**

_Click._

_Click-click._

_Click-click._

Nate suppressed a groan and the urge to rip the pen out of Parker's hand and throw it out of the van's rear door.

_Click._

He could understand that the thief was nervous, of course he could. Hell, he himself wasn't exactly a poster boy for calm right now either. But this…

_Click-click-click-click-click._

This was definitely going too far.

"Parker!"

The young woman glared at him, but she put the pen she had been twirling in her hands for the past minutes down and looked into the other direction, her gaze hard and the line of her jaw set. Nate sighed. The glares were probably worse than the nervous twitching. He knew Parker well enough to know by now that sitting still, doing nothing even, was something she was physically incapable of.

Parker was a bundle of restless energy that needed to be released in regular intervals lest it exploded, and nobody wanted to be around when _that_ happened. Especially now that Eliot and Hardison were missing, the urge to go and do something about that was getting overwhelming in the younger woman. Nate could relate to that, he really could.

But he was also more rational than the young thief was, and that rational part of his brain knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that at this moment, there was nothing else they could do but observe Fuentes' warehouse in the hope of finding out where the man had brought their two team members.

It was weak, Nate knew that.

But no amount of glaring from Parker or world-weary sighs from Sophie could change anything about that right now. At least Sophie seemed to understand, holding back the remarks Nate simply knew were on the tip of her tongue and doing her best to keep Parker calm and – most importantly – confined to the car as they sat and watched.

The worst part was that Nate knew how horribly inadequate it all was. They had driven to the warehouse as fast as they had been able to, yet it had been obvious from the very first moment of their arrival on that they had been too late. Other than the remaining night guards who had picked up their routes again, nobody was around. The office was dark, and no cars or vans in the vicinity suggested that Berger, Eliot or Hardison were still around.

But there simply was no way to know where the man could have taken the two. Fuentes owned many properties all over San Diego, searching each and every one of them was going to be a completely impossible task.

No, their only chance right now was to stake out the warehouse and see if maybe Berger or Fuentes came here again this night. The drug deal was still going down, after all. Now that the office had been broken into, Fuentes would want to get the cocaine out of his warehouse as quickly as possible.

So the buyer was going to come by soon to pick up the merchandise. And somebody was going to be there to hand it over. Their only chance was to latch onto Berger or Fuentes as soon as they showed up to oversee the deal, and hope that they'd lead them back to where Eliot and Hardison were. That, or the hope that one of them was going to let something slip about their two teammates on the cell phones Hardison had tapped before his disappearance – it was all they had left to find them.

It was a slim chance, if anything.

Nate understood that Parker was ready to go through the roof, he really did.

It felt completely inadequate, and Nate couldn't help shaking off the feeling that he was failing Eliot and Hardison horribly. Wherever they were, Berger had brought them there to get information. He hadn't killed them immediately, that at least was something. But it wasn't enough, because sooner or later they were going to have outlived their usefulness. And Nate intended to find them before that happened.

Now he only needed to figure out a way to do that.

Raising the binoculars again, Nate looked over towards the dark warehouse. There was nothing new to see there, of course. But still, it was better than looking at Parker's glares alternating with nervous twitches, and way better than the mournful way Sophie was staring at Hardison's computer equipment, as if she could figure out how to work miracles with it if only she looked long enough. But other than the programs that their computer expert had set up before he had left with Eliot, there was nothing they could use to find their missing team-mates. Neither of them had the skills to even try and work the equipment, so they were left with taps on Berger's and Fuentes' cell phones, connections which had been suspiciously silent ever since their men had been taken.

Silence settled over the van again as Nate swept the binoculars all around the area around the warehouses. But at this time of night, the area was pretty much dead. No traffic, no workers. Just dark warehouses, impenetrable shadows between buildings, and orange streetlights illuminating the docks outside of the chain link fence. Not even any cars were parked anywhere around aside from their own van which Parker had wedged into the shadow between two buildings. Well, no car other than another dark van parked a few hundred yards down the road.

Nate had already turned the binoculars away when he suddenly found himself swiveling back sharply, brining the van more into focus. He was sure that it hadn't been there the last time he had swept their surroundings with the binoculars. But that wasn't even what startled him about it. Nate turned the small wheel on the binoculars to get the van into sharper focus and for a few seconds simply stared.

"I'll be damned."

"What is it?" Sophie asked, and Nate lowered the binoculars, handing them over to Sophie without ever taking his eyes off the van in the distance.

"The van. Take a look at it."

Sophie raised the binoculars, and Parker scrambled over from the perch on her seat to see what Nate had discovered.

"What van? What about it?"

Sophie just looked for a moment, not moving an inch, then she let the binoculars sink down again with a look of disbelief on her face. She didn't even seem to notice that Parker snatched the binoculars out of her hand to take a look for herself.

Sophie turned towards Nate and shook her head.

"Does it really just say _Maintenance_ on the side of that truck?"

Nate nodded, allowing a small smile to show on his face. This could mean a new complication, but in their current situation Nate was ready and willing to accept even a complication as a new outlook on things. And really, there was only one specific group of people who would use a van marked _Maintenance_, with no logo, no phone number, nothing else printed on the side.

Looking from Sophie to Parker and back again, Nate let his smile grow wider.

"It's chapter one in every law enforcement handbook – nobody pays attention to maintenance."

Parker scrunched up her nose.

"Unless they're parked right in the middle of a deserted warehouse district street at night, thinking nobody will notice them. I mean, who is stupid enough to think that's a good decoy?"

Nate shrugged and got up from his seat.

"Let's find out."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Please don't tell me that you can't swim."

When Hardison didn't answer, Eliot stopped fiddling with the lock and turned towards the other man. It had been a throwaway remark, one he had thought Hardison would rebuke immediately. But not hearing him protest against it suddenly made this screwed up situation so much worse. The computer expert was standing there, looking down at his feet as if they were the most interesting thing at this very moment. It was all the confirmation Eliot needed, but he still didn't want to believe it.

"Hardison?"

Slowly, Hardison looked up, cocking his head to the side with a shrug of his shoulders that was trying for nonchalant, yet failed miserably. Something in Eliot's stomach dropped down to his knees.

"You can't _swim_?"  
Again, Hardison shrugged. "No."

"But…why?"

"Why?" Now Hardison was the one who looked as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Why can't I swim? What kind of question is that?"  
"Because everybody can swim, Hardison. Every-_damn_-body. Seriously, what did you do during your youth?"

Hardison puffed out his chest. "I spent my formative years in front of a _computer_, Eliot. Computers and water don't mix. I had a choice to make and chose the computer, end of story, man."

"I'm not talking about taking your computer for a swim, for crying out loud! I'm talking about coming out from behind the screen occasionally. Are you trying to tell me you never did that?"

Hardison drew breath as if to say something, but then shook his head and waved the other man off.

Eliot sighed and ran a hand through his hair. That screwed their plan ten ways to hell. If they wanted to get off this boat, their only chance was to do so while they were still near the harbor where other boats were close by. But if Hardison couldn't swim, jumping into the water was out of the question. Too many things that could go wrong.

Eliot couldn't take the risk that the other man would go down before he could get to him. And if he evaluated his condition honestly, Eliot wasn't too sure he'd be able to hold both himself and Hardison above the water for long right now.

"Damn."

Hardison grimaced at the heartfelt curse. "Sorry."

Eliot shook his head. "That's just great."

He started pacing up and down the room. Not that there was much room to pace. The small storage space they had been locked up in was barely big enough for him to make two steps into one direction before he had to turn around again. They needed a plan, and fast. He had no idea how long until someone was going to come looking for them again. Right now they had the advantage that they were no longer tied up, and they needed to make the best of that advantage before someone else found out about it.

"I got an idea."

Eliot stopped his pacing and looked up at the other man. "What?"

"You go."

"What?"

Hardison shrugged. "You go and sneak overboard. Then you find Nate and the team and come back with help."

Eliot shook his head before Hardison even finished speaking. Splitting up was not an acceptable solution. If the situation were reversed, Eliot would have stayed behind. But that was different. He knew how to take care of himself in such a situation. And the cruel reality was that Hardison didn't. So there was no way he was going to leave Hardison alone on a ship full of people who wanted to kill them. It simply wasn't an option.

"No."

"What no? It's a plan, Eliot. You find help and then come back to get me. Unless you got a better idea, I'd say we go for it. I can take care of myself."

"No." Eliot repeated, his voice final. "We're not splitting up."

But one thing Hardison was right about. They needed to get help. If Hardison couldn't swim, there was no way they were going to make it off the boat on their own. There was no chance to launch a lifeboat without anybody noticing, so they were stuck here on the boat until help arrived. Or until they had reached whatever destination their captors had in mind for them. Eliot seriously hoped he was going to figure something out before that happened. He had no idea where they were headed, but he was fairly sure that Berger hadn't planned a beach vacation for them. More something along the lines of a diving exercise in international waters. With added lead weights.

So if they couldn't get off the boat, they needed to get help to them.

But Nate and the others probably had no idea where they were, or that they were on a boat to begin with. Somehow, they needed to make contact and let them know. Eliot hated being stuck in a situation he couldn't get himself out of on his own. But he had Hardison to consider, and that was a whole different thing than the situations Eliot found himself in normally.

They needed a different plan.

And suddenly an idea struck. Eliot couldn't help that his hand jerked up to his ear when it did, even though he knew that their ear-pieces were gone. Eliot spun around to face Hardison again.

"Hardison, when they searched us, did they take everything?"

Hardison's face pulled into a frown before he shrugged.

"I don't know what you mean by _everything_, man. But after they found the ear-pieces, they were pretty thorough. Took our phones and every bit of electronic equipment they found. They even took my watch. I mean, who do they think I am, James Bond? What kind of people take another man's watch, anyway? I liked that watch."

"So they didn't leave anything you could use to contact Nate and the others?"

Hardison shook his head. "Nothing, no. And the way they frisked you while you were out of it was rated a hard R, too. So unless you got a satellite phone hidden in that other boot of yours, we're pretty much screwed."

Eliot pushed his hair out of his face with a heavy sigh. Yeah, because that would have been way too easy. Then they just had to make do with what they had.

"How about the boat?"

"What about it?"

"They must have a radio of some sort around here, right?"

Hardison nodded. "Yeah, sure. I mean, a boat this size, and judged by the look of this nice little place they have us confined to it isn't exactly old either. It must have radio, satellite uplink, the works."

That was the first good piece of news all day.

"So if we get to it, we could contact Nate?"

Hardison nodded. "Sure. It's the getting to it part that might become a problem."

"Where do we have to go? The bridge?"

Because that would just be their crappy luck. Getting to the bridge would mean taking out a number of people along the way, and right now Eliot wasn't too sure that he'd be able to do that.

But Hardison shook his head, and Eliot couldn't help the small sigh of relief that escaped him at that.

"Nah. I mean, we could go there, of course. But the bridge only has repeaters and receivers. There should be a communications room somewhere else on the boat, below decks. If we can get there, we should be able to set off a call for help without anybody noticing."

"Okay. Do you have any idea where we can find that? In the engine room?"

"Dude, you can't be serious! You don't put comms equipment in an engine room! All that engine grease is going to wreak havoc on the computers!"

Eliot raised his hands in a pacifying manner, but suppressed his urge to roll his eyes. "Okay, okay. So where do we look for it?"

Hardison cocked his head to the side with a shrug. "Probably somewhere in the vicinity of the engine room. Below decks, away from the cabins, if this boat has any. Door's got to be labeled somehow."

Eliot nodded, processing that information. As soon as they left this room it was going to get likely that they were going to run into somebody, below decks or not. But there were going to be more people on the bridge than strolling the corridors, so this still seemed like the better option.

"So there'll be something like a phone there?"

While Eliot trusted Hardison's expertise, he wasn't quite able to imagine what the setup was going to look like. He knew there had to be something like a radio on the bridge, but found it hard to imagine having a satellite phone tucked away somewhere in the bowels of a ship like this.

Hardison shook his head.

"Worst case scenario, we'll find a radio of some sorts that we can use to call someone through official channels. Best case scenario, we'll find a computer uplink and a satellite phone, then we can call Nate directly."

"And you're sure about that?"

Hardison started, an offended expression settling on his face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, one moment you tell me that you don't swim, and that water and computers don't mix, and the next you're sprouting technical details about a ship's communication equipment. I'm just wondering."

"That I don't swim doesn't mean I can't know about boats, Eliot. I couldn't build you one, so I'm probably not in the race for saving two of each kind come the next Flood, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about, okay? Communications equipment is technical stuff. Computer stuff. And if there's one thing I know, it's computers, okay?"

Eliot took a small step away, taken aback by the force of Hardison's reaction.

"All right, all right. Gee, no reason to get this testy with me."

"No reason?" Hardison's voice was getting louder, and Eliot was getting afraid that they could be heard outside in the corridor as well. "No _reason_? I'm stuck on a boat, somewhere on the Pacific Ocean, after I've been kidnapped by a bunch of wannabe drug dealers who want to kill me! I can't get off this boat without drowning, the people who could help us are miles away, and in case you hadn't noticed it before, you're in no shape to be trying to take on all these thugs that probably are on this boat with us. In all likelihood, we'll be dead before the end of the day. So yeah, I think I have a right to be testy!"

Eliot raised an eyebrow at the outburst. Hardison did have a habit of over-exaggerating, but right now this was going over the top even considering his normal behavior. Eliot knew that it was the stress and the fear, though Hardison would never admit the latter out loud. But they didn't need that kind of crap right now. There'd be a time to freak out later.

Taking a step forward, Eliot fixed Hardison with a hard stare.

"Save it for later, Hardison. Right now we need to get out of here, then you can freak out."

"Freak out? I'm not freaking out, I'm stating the facts! If we run into any kind of trouble on our way to the comms room, we're dead, Eliot. Dead. _D-E-A-D_. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be dead. I very much want to keep living, thanks a lot. And unlike you, I'm not used to the bad guys driving me out to international waters to dispose of my body, so I'm entitled to being a slight bit worried about our situation, all right? You might take out small armies with just a flick of your wrist on a weekly basis, but this isn't my world! I just want to get out of here, preferably with all my limbs functioning and attached to where they are now. I have to rely on you for that, and the fact that you keep questioning my knowledge isn't helping, all right? Besides, I don't know why you care so much about whether or not I'm freaking out. It's not as if we're friends, right?"

That last sentence was said with such venom that it took Eliot momentarily aback.

"What?"

"It's not as if we're _friends_, so why should you care whether I'm freaking out or not."

Eliot was confused. More than just confused, he had absolutely no idea what Hardison was talking about. All he knew was that they had no time to waste on stuff like that right now. Yet Hardison seemed to have come to a point where he had gotten too wound up about whatever he was talking about to stop. Eliot got the sinking feeling that they wouldn't get out of this room without talking about this.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That's what you said to Fuentes. _He's not my friend_. Pretty much followed by an invitation to punch me for all he liked, because no matter what he did, it wasn't going to make you tell him anything. That's what I'm talking about. And I get it. This here," he gestured around the small room, "this whole getting kidnapped by pissed off wannabe drug dealers, it ain't my world. It's your turf man. Your part of the job. I'm just the computer geek that you have to drag out of this mess. I get it, Eliot. So let's just get out of here and hope that you're not too concussed to do what you do best and get rid of everyone in our way until we get to the comms room, all right?"

Eliot had Hardison pinned up against the nearest wall without conscious thought. The younger man's eyes widened, and it would have been comical had it not been for the fact that Eliot was scaring Hardison. And somehow, he would have never expected that reaction anymore. Right now however, they needed to get this out of the way and make sure they survived. They could take care of all hurt sensibilities later.

"Now listen to me Hardison, and listen good because we don't have time for me to repeat myself over and over again."

Hardison shifted a little against Eliot's hold, but the pressure of Eliot's arm over the other man's chest remained firm and kept him pinned in place. Just hard enough to keep him pinned in place without hurting him. If Hardison wanted to throw a hissy fit, fine. If it helped him get it out of his system. But the stakes were much too high for them to be having an elongated discussion about it.

"I'm not going to discuss this whole _are we friends?_ issue with you right now, because fuck – we're not in grade school, all right? But did you consider for just one moment that I had my reasons? Did you? Because back in that warehouse, Berger and those guards saw that I surrendered the moment they held a gun to your head. Guys like that are not stupid, Hardison. The first thing they do is use that to get the information they want. So I did my damned best to keep Fuentes' attention away from you, because unlike you _I_ know how to deal with such a situation. Once we get to the comms room I'll gladly surrender the lead to you and let you do whatever it is you have to do to let Nate know where we are. But until then, you will do as I say, and when I say it, and you won't start questioning whether that means we're friends or not. Do I make myself clear?"

Hardison swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbling up and down, before he gave a jerky nod. Eliot let go and took a few steps back.

"Good. Now I'm gonna pick that lock and we'll go searching for that comms room. Do you think you know where we have to go?"

Hardison nodded. "Depends on where we are." He gestured to the windowless wall behind them. "Could be this deck, could be another deck lower. We should be looking for the engine room, it should be around there somewhere." His tone was still clipped, but the open animosity had vanished for now. And Eliot was sure that it once they were out of here and all the adrenaline had stopped flowing through his system, the younger man was going to forget about what had happened.

"Good. Then let's go."

There was nothing in the room that would be useful as a weapon, so Eliot turned back towards the door. As he had assessed earlier, the lock was not a complicated one. He wasn't Parker when it came to these things, but getting this lock open would be no problem as long as he found a solid piece of wire, or something of a similar consistency.

The shelves contained dried food mostly, nothing of any use, but this was a boat after all. And the bad guys had broken rule number one about tying someone up already, so Eliot wasn't too surprised that they hadn't taken care to remove everything that could be used for lock picking. It didn't take him too long to find a piece of thin electrical cord that, once stripped of its isolation, would suffice.

It wasn't perfect, and it took a bit more fumbling than anticipated, but eventually the lock clicked open. Eliot let go of the piece of wire and turned towards Hardison.

"Stay behind me", he ordered, his voice low and determined. Hardison hesitated for a moment, then he nodded.

"Good."

Eliot slowly and carefully pulled open the door, listening first before he made a move. But there was no sound in the corridor outside, nobody moving towards them. Not even the sound of somebody breathing. Eliot gave it ten seconds, then he crouched down slightly and stuck his head out the door.

The storage room was located near the end of a short corridor, and there was nobody in sight. Quickly, Eliot stepped out of the room and waved for Hardison to follow him. Once the other man had left the room, Eliot carefully pulled the door shut behind them. It was all he could do, and for as long as their captors thought that they were still tied up in that room, chances were that nobody was going to come looking for them. It wasn't much, but it was hope that they weren't going to be detected before they had been able to contact Nate.

Eliot tapped Hardison's arm.

"Where to?" He mouthed when the other man's attention was on him. Hardison gestured to the porthole at the end of the corridor. Daylight filtered through the grimy window. Hardison shrugged and gestured towards the floor. They needed to get down.

To the right, the corridor was a dead end, so Eliot once again gestured for Hardison to stay behind him and then slowly and silently started to walk down the narrow passage to their left. There was nobody in sight, but they were passing a few closed doors along the way. All it would take was one guy opening the wrong door at the wrong time to lead to their discovery. Eliot was acutely aware of the fact that out here in the open they were sitting ducks, with nowhere left to go in case somebody discovered them.

Their only chance to make it out of this alive was to make sure that nobody knew they had gotten out of the storage room.

Eliot had no idea how many people were on the boat with them, but he'd only be able to relax even marginally once they were out of sight and inside a room with a closed door again. Watching their backs was going to be a lot easier if he only had to look in one direction.

Up ahead, right where the grimy porthole was located, the corridor intersected with another one. Eliot raised his hand in a signal for Hardison to stop, then he cautiously peered around the corner.

Another corridor to the left, with stairs at the end leading up. At the end of the stairs Eliot was able to make out daylight, so he guessed they were leading up on deck. Not the direction they wanted to go, absolutely not.

Just as he wanted to turn his head to look the other way, there was the sound of steps echoing loudly down the narrow corridor. Heart beating fast in his chest, Eliot watched as a dark shape moved over the top of the stairs, blocking out the trickle of daylight shining into the corridor below.

* * *

TBC...

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Thanks for

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reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	6. Won't Hold Water

Here you go with the next chapter.

This is the one where I have to extend thanks to _windscryer _for her nautical knowledge again. All remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone, and without her awesome explanations this part would have a lot less credibility.

Also, a huge thank you goes out to sjrspike on LiveJournal who helped me figure out the names of a certain pair of Federal Agents when I was too stupid to do so on my own. So thanks a lot for that.

Enjoy!

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**Chapter 5 – Won't Hold Water**

They were sadly unprepared for this. Nate was furious at himself that he had let the situation get out of control like that. Now Eliot and Hardison were not only missing, but in the hands of a man who wouldn't hesitate to kill them, and they had to rely on second hand info from the Feds in the vain hope to find out more about their whereabouts.

Not that Nate doubted for one second that the only people hiding out in a van marked _Maintenance_ in a warehouse area in the middle of the night were federal agents. There simply couldn't be any other explanation.

But fact was that if the Feds wouldn't be able to help them find Eliot and Hardison, they were screwed. And other than a few random fake badges that Hardison had left lying in the van, they had no convincing preparation to face the feds. Hell, they didn't even know who they were – FBI, DEA, Immigration, it could be practically anybody staking out this area at night.

Nate hated it when a job went out of control like that, but up until now no job had ever gotten out of control to the degree that members of their team had been cut off form communication like Eliot and Hardison were now. Even when Sterling had screwed up that one job for them so badly, Nate at least had known where his people were, and he had been able to make a plan how to get them out.

Nate desperately wanted a drink, but now was neither the right time nor the right place.

First they had to find their two missing teammates.

Sophie was still wearing the dress she had put on for Fuentes' party, but Parker's serving staff clothes were quickly converted into something that could pass off for a business suit if nobody took a closer look. Nate threw on a windbreaker that belonged to Hardison and picked out two badges for Parker and him.

"All right, let's go see who our friends are. Sophie, you stay here. If there's any sign of trouble, you take the van back to headquarters and wait till we get into contact with you."

Sophie didn't look too appealed at the thought of any additional trouble, but she nodded.

"Take care."

Parker had already climbed out of the back of the van, and Nate followed the young thief. The other van was parked a few hundred yards down the street, facing towards them, but the cabin was empty.

It was getting colder, too. Not that it ever got really cold in San Diego. Southern California wasn't exactly arctic, but the temperatures had definitely dropped a couple of degrees, and wind had picked up. It was getting winter really quick, and even Californian winters could become cold.

Nate pulled the windbreaker more tightly around himself and hurried towards the van. Nothing moved inside as they approached and walked around to the back. Whoever was in there was too focused on their observation to notice that they were here.

Nate pulled out his badge, nodded at Parker and then banged against the back door of the van two times.

There was silence for a few seconds, then hushed voices conversing before the back door of the van opened a slight bit and a face carefully peered out.

"What is it?"

Nate held up his badge.

"Special Agent Aaron Burkovitz, from the Los Angeles office. This is…"

"Special Agent Hagen?"

Nate swiveled around and looked at Parker, who was staring with wide eyes at the man in the back of the van. After a few seconds, the van's door opened wider and the young agent facing them came into full view. A wide smile on his face, he stepped to the side as much as the cramped space allowed him and gestured with his hand.

"Do come in."

Nate still had no idea what was going on, but right now he wasn't above looking a gift horse in the mouth. With one last look at Parker, who still seemed surprised and stunned, Nate shrugged and climbed into the back of the van.

Inside it was stifling, smelling of old fast food, stale sweat and too many hours of people being confined in a too small space.

The young special agent who had opened the door for them retreated to the far end of the van, where an older agent was sitting in a swivel chair, looking curiously at them. As soon as his eyes fell on Parker, his whole face lit up.

"Special Agent Hagen! That's a surprise."

Parker looked confused, settling on a smile that was more a short, feral grin than anything remotely reassuring. Nate wanted to smack himself. He knew that he should know these agents from somewhere, but the penny absolutely refused to drop right now. With all the shitty luck they had been having today, this was just another point on the long list.

"A surprise. Yeah. That's…that's true."

Parker seemed to have overcome her initial surprise, and grudgingly Nate settled on following her lead. This wasn't Parker's role, improvising interactions. It wasn't her forte, and normally they planned their cons just so that she wouldn't have to do this. But right now, all plans had long gone out of the window and they were all improvising.

"So," she said with another fake smile. "What are you doing here?"

"We're on surveillance." The younger agent said, pulling out the second lone swivel chair for Parker to sit on. "We didn't know there'd be nay other agents around the area. Oh, but I'm forgetting my manners."

He gestured towards the older agent sitting next to him. "Special Agent Taggert, and I'm Special Agent McSweeten."

Automatically, Nate stuck out his hand to the older agent. "Special Agent Burkovitz."

Taggert shook the hand, his grip firm and dry. "A pleasure. Special Agent Hagen and her partner back then helped us out a little on another surveillance job a while back. What was his name? Thomas. Special Agent Thomas. He's no longer your partner?"

And then it clicked. The Moscone job, the Mafioso wedding they had crashed. He had never met the agents in the surveillance van back then, but of course Parker and Hardison had. Well, meeting someone who already knew them from an old con hadn't been part of any plan, but then again nothing today had been, really. Nate would have preferred dealing with unknown people, but they had to take what they got and play along.

"It's always good to work with someone you know. As for Special Agent Thomas, he's…involved in this operation."

Taggert smiled. "Well, I hope we'll get the chance to meet him again. He really helped us out with the surveillance equipment on that other mission we worked. So, Agent Burkovitz – what brings you here in the middle of the night? Nobody called to tell us that you were coming."

"It wasn't planned. You're observing that office building over there?" He gestured vaguely into the direction where Fuentes' warehouse office was located, the place where Eliot and Hardison had been captured earlier that night.

McSweeten nodded. "Yes, we were sent here for surveillance. Arrived just a few minutes ago, in fact, and were just setting up shop. You guys have been here all evening? I wasn't aware that there was another team working surveillance on Hector Fuentes."

Nate's mind was whirling, trying to come up with a plausible story, one that the two agents wouldn't be able to check but that would make them give him as much information as possible. A sharp headache was beginning to develop and for the first time that evening Nate consciously wished he had a drink.

"Agent Hagen and me are the handlers for an undercover operation. Earlier this evening we lost contact to our agents."

McSweeten's eyes widened, making him look impossibly young. How old did you have to be to become a field agent, anyway? Nate was sure there was some sort of age regulation on that.

"An undercover operation? Wait, are you telling me that Agent Thomas is the one who went undercover?"

McSweeten looked at Parker, who only nodded silently. His face fell a little. "I hope he's not in trouble. We didn't know anything about any undercover operations."

Yes, that was a big problem, Nate knew that. It was SOP in law enforcement never to have two teams work on the same case without them knowing about it. Too much could go wrong otherwise. He'd have to rely on the gullibility the two agents had shown in their previous encounter to convince them.

"I know. We have two agents in deep cover in Fuentes' operation, Special Agent Thomas as well as another highly qualified agent. Only the handlers and the team leader know about the operation, and until now we weren't made aware that another team was working on the Fuentes case."

"We weren't, not until today in fact. The DEA required our assistance. They have a huge bust in preparation and are short-staffed on surveillance personnel. But we weren't briefed on any other FBI involvement in the case."

That was the opening Nate had been looking for.

"They didn't know. As I said, it's a deep cover operation, and until earlier this evening it was going well. But now we lost contact to our agents, and we need to find them again."

McSweeten looked stricken while Taggert only nodded. "Of course. What do you need?"

Nate took a step towards the two agents and put his hands on the small counter that ran along the side of the van which held all the surveillance equipment.

"I need you to tell me everything you know about Fuentes. And I need to know everything about that planned DEA bust tonight, and why you are here. Most importantly, I need to know if you have any surveillance documentation on this building from earlier tonight that could tell me where my men were taken to."

Taggert nodded. "No surveillance before we got here, but I can brief you on the rest."

"Good. I need as much detail as you can, and as quickly as you can. My men have been gone for over two hours now, we don't have any more time to lose."

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

**OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo**

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

As the shadow fell down the stairs, Eliot jerked back, his arm going out in an automatic movement to stop Hardison from walking past him and into plain sight of whoever was coming down the stairs. The movement tore at his injured ribs, and Eliot bit his lip to keep in the grunt of pain that rose in his throat. His side was feeling worse with every abrupt movement, and his breaths were coming in small flat bursts as he tried to be as silent as possible and listen to the sound of steps on the stairs above the rapid thudding of his heart. He knew what that meant, and a distant part of his brain was analyzing in no uncertain terms that it was only going to get worse before it got better, and that it most definitely wouldn't get better at all if he didn't get those injured and shifting ribs treated soon.

But there was on time for those deliberations now. Now he needed to listen and try to find out how many people were coming towards them. It would be easy, he'd only have to count the pairs of steps on the stairs.

But none came.

Eliot silently counted to ten in his head, still listening intently. No sounds. He counted to ten once more, and then another time for good measure. When still no sounds indicated that somebody was coming towards them, Eliot drew a deep breath, held out a finger to signal for Hardison to stay put, and carefully stuck out his head into the corridor.

There was nobody there, and the shadow on top of the stairs leading towards the deck had left. Eliot carefully looked to the right, but other than another set of metal stairs leading down there was nothing and nobody in sight there, either.

Eliot turned back towards the stairs and waited, silently counting his heartbeats as the seconds passed.

Five.

Ten.

At twelve beats, Hardison shifted impatiently.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

At twenty-two, the shadow came back. This time, Eliot didn't jerk back. His muscles tensed almost automatically, but he didn't hide away into the corridor again. Somebody was standing on top of the stairs, but they weren't walking down. After another ten heartbeats, the shadow moved again and vanished out of Eliot's line of sight. He breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Somebody was patrolling upstairs, but it seemed that they weren't intent on coming down here unless they were given a reason to. At least for now, and that would have to do. Eliot turned back towards Hardison, who was watching him with wide eyes. The younger man relaxed slightly when Eliot shook his head at him, but only to a very small degree.

Eliot gestured towards the intersecting corridor and to their right, indicating that this was their way down to the lower level. Once more he pressed his finger to his lips, and when Hardison nodded Eliot turned around and signaled for them to go.

The corridor was still empty, no shadow moving on the upper deck, and Eliot quickly turned towards the right and started to descend the stairs as silently and carefully as possible. If they were lucky, nobody was going to be patrolling the lower deck. But their evening had already been anything but lucky, and if someone was down there, they were going to be sitting ducks and this whole attempted flight was going to be over before it had even begun.

The corridor was brightly lit, the neon lights replacing the lack of natural light down here. And the corridor was blessedly empty. At least one small sliver of hope in this whole mess. Eliot moved himself and Hardison as far away from the staircase as he could, checking doors as they went. To their left was a door marked Engine Room, and Eliot felt his heart speed up as the next door they passed was inscribed "Communications". He stopped in front of the door and put a hand on Hardison's shoulder to stop the other man from opening the door.

"What?" Hardison asked, lips moving exaggeratedly while no sound escaped his lips. At least he was trying to be quiet.

"How likely is it that someone's going to be in here?" Eliot whispered, not able to guess whether it was likely or not that someone was going to be in there.

But Hardison only shook his head. "Unless they got technical problems that need fixing, not likely."

"Good. Stay behind me."

Hardison rolled his eyes at the unnecessary remark, but obligingly stayed behind Eliot as the other man put a hand on the doorknob and opened the door. The communications room was small, maybe ten by twelve feet, windowless, and stuffed to the brim with equipment that meant absolutely nothing to Eliot, but that made Hardison's eyes widen in excitement.

He quickly ushered Hardison inside and pulled the door closed behind them, waiting till the lock clicked shut with a small sound before he allowed himself a small breath of relief. As long as nobody came into this room for the next few minutes, they were safe for the moment. Not safe in the sense that he could let his guard down, but safe enough for him to relax just enough to not further aggravate the various hurts all over his body. Of course, if somebody came into this room and found them, they were probably dead. But Hardison had everything he needed to contact Nate, and from then on he'd only have to keep them alive until help came.

He could do that.

His ribs were aching fiercely by now, and taking deep breaths was out of the question. A steady headache was pulsing behind his temples and he wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep for a week, but he could definitely keep up for a little while longer.

"Hey, Eliot!"

Fingers snapping in front of his face brought Eliot back to awareness, and he was surprised to notice that he had drifted off for a moment. So much for relaxing only marginally. It seemed that his body had other ideas about that, and he couldn't afford for it to shut down now of all times. He really needed to keep it together for a little while longer.

Blinking, Eliot forced himself to look into Hardison's worried face.

"You with me?"

"Yeah." Something in his mouth tasted like bile, but Eliot forced himself to ignore it. It wouldn't help them any if he started puking all over the equipment that would hopefully save their lives. He only needed to hold on to coherency for a little longer.

"Yeah, I'm good."

Hardison didn't look as if he believed a single word, but he turned back towards the computer equipment. Eliot stayed where he was, leaning against the door as he tried to get the various pains in his body back under control. Hardison looked around for a few moments, then he determinedly went over to what looked like a small laptop installed into a huge computer system. Hardison hit a few keys, and the small monitor came to life.

This was beyond Eliot's scope of understanding. Now it was up to Hardison to send out their call for help.

Hardison clicked and typed for a few more seconds, then he turned back towards Eliot.

"All right, I can work this. This here," he pointed to the terminal he had been working on, "this is the main communications station. The bridge and every other place on this boat only have repeaters. But this is the place where all the communications go through. We should be able to make a call to Nate from here."

Hardison pointed to a receiver mounted to the wall next to the terminal, and Eliot felt a ridiculous amount of relief at the sight of the phone.

"Great. Then go ahead and call Nate."

Hardison grimaced slightly. "Not as easy as that, I'm afraid."

"What?" Eliot pushed himself off the wall and walked the few steps over to where the other man was standing. "You said you could call Nate."

"And I can. But with a satellite phone setup like this, I need the pass-code for the phone first."

"How long?"

It wasn't a question of whether Hardison could get the pass-code or not, Eliot knew that. But they couldn't waste any time.

"Not too long I hope." Hardison went back to the terminal and started typing. "It all depends on the system, you know? And on how good they're trying to hide things. And let me tell you man, these days I get the feeling that people aren't even really trying to make it difficult. You'd think that a guy like Fuentes, with as much money as he's throwing around for this boat and all the other stuff, he'd be a little more worried about security." Hardison kept up his steady stream of words as he typed. Under any other circumstances Eliot would have told him to be quiet, but he got the feeling that the younger man needed to release some of the tension their situation caused. And Hardison was keeping his voice down, so there was a good chance that they wouldn't be heard outside the thick metal door anyway.

"And there we go." Hardison hit a key with determination and turned around, a wide grin on his face. "ET is ready to phone home, man."

"Good. Now we only need to let Nate know where we are. Think you can figure that out?"

Hardison laughed with a shake of his head. "Can I figure that out? Dude, I can give him the fix on our location in so much detail, he won't have to do anything but get a boat and punch in the coordinates. I'll pull it up, you make the call."

Eliot nodded and picked the receiver from the wall. It looked like an ordinary satellite phone, something he had used before occasionally.

"What's the code?"

Hardison didn't look up from the monitor as he replied. "Star-seven-zero-zero-five-star. Then you should be good to go to dial Nate's number."

Eliot punched in the digits, then dialed Nate's cell phone number which he had committed to memory a long time ago. He didn't like to rely on anything but his own brain when it came to things that might potentially save his life. Cell phones and their memory chips could be lost, but he couldn't lose a number if he had it in his head.

As soon as he had pushed the last button, Eliot raised the phone to his ear and waited, impatiently drumming his fingers against his thigh. There was some crackling static in the line, but no other sound came through. Especially nothing that would suggest that his call was going through.

Eliot looked at Hardison and found the younger man looking back at him, eyes wide and nervously wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans.

"What?"

"It's not going through."

"What do you mean, it's not going through? Of course it's going through. I gave you the code man, the call has to go through!"

"Well then, maybe your code was wrong."

Hardison bristled. "My code was _what_? You don't know what you're talking about. I give you a code, you can bet that it's the right one." Hardison shook his head. "_The code is wrong_. You're lucky I'd never strike an injured man because normally I'd slap you for even thinking something like that."

Eliot didn't have enough energy left for amusement at that insinuation. They both knew what the chances of Hardison ever physically going against him were. Hardison's rant and the rest of the conversation was cut short when suddenly there was another crackle of static on the line, followed by a single beep and finally, finally Nate's voice.

"Hello."

The rush of relief Eliot felt shouldn't have been so overwhelming. He was doing this for too many years now, too many years with nobody to rely on but himself. But there was no denying it, he was relieved to hear the other man's voice.

"Nate, it's Eliot."

"Eliot, thank god." Judged by the other man's voice, the relief was a mutual feeling. "Where are you? Is Hardison with you?"

"Yeah, he's here."

The sigh that came over the line was audible even over the static overlaying the connection.

"Good. You two all right?"

"Yeah, we're good. Listen Nate…"

Eliot was interrupted when suddenly Hardison stepped up beside him and pulled the receiver over towards himself.

"By '_good_' Eliot means that _I'm_ good, and he's got a couple of cracked ribs, a concussion, and looks like he just went twelve rounds against a brick wall."

Eliot pulled the phone away from the other man, scandalized. "Gimme that, you idiot!"

"Eliot!" Nate's voice came out of the speaker. "Is that true?"

Eliot glared at Hardison, his jaw clenched. He had hoped they'd manage to skip the list of his injuries for now. It wasn't as if Nate could do anything to help right now, anyway. Not until they came for help. That was the most important part right now.

"It's not that bad."

"Eliot. Give me an honest answer here."

"I'll manage, all right? So could we just skip this and look for a way get us off this boat?"

A second of startled silence came over the line. Then, in an incredulous voice – "You're on a _boat_?"

"Yes, we're on a _boat_. And if Hardison hadn't been playing General Hospital, I would have told you that already. Berger's men brought us to one of Fuentes' boats. The big boss paid us a visit, and when we didn't give him the information he wanted, they pulled out of the harbor. I'm guessing that we're headed either for Mexico or for international waters. We can't get off this boat on our own, so you need to get help to us, and fast."

"Okay. We'll figure something out. I need the name of the boat, and your position."

Eliot took a step over to Hardison and handed him the satellite phone. "Nate needs to know our position."

Hardison grabbed the phone and stuck it between his ear and shoulder as he continued to type into the computer terminal.

"Nate? The boat we're on is called the _Santa Esmeralda_, we left port about an hour ago now. I've sent the coordinates of our position to your phone."

"Hang on a second."

Eliot heard movement through the connection, and Nate's voice saying something he couldn't quite make out to someone else with him. He was surprised when another male voice answered. Who was there with Nate, and even more importantly why did Nate involve outsiders in their current problem? True, neither Sophie nor Parker were adept at his or Hardison's normal tasks, but Eliot knew for a fact how much Nate was loathe to involve anyone outside of the team into their jobs. It went against every single one of the other man's control urges.

"Nate?"

But there was no answer other than the urgent and hectic conversation in the background, and Eliot realized that Nate must have taken the phone away from his ear in order to copy the coordinates Hardison had sent him. But that shouldn't take as long as Nate was taking right now.

"Nate, damn it!"

Hardison was looking over towards him with both eyebrows raised.

"What's wrong?"

Eliot shrugged. "I have no idea. Hold on."

The voices grew louder for a moment, going back and forth sharply but still too distant for Eliot to hear what exactly was being said. He distantly wondered whether Nate had covered the phone with his hand. And then Nate's voice was back, and his clipped tones were suddenly so much more tight and pressing.

"Eliot, the two of you need to get off the boat."

"That's what I'm telling you. You need to send help here to get us off."

"No Eliot, you don't understand. You need to get off this boat right _now_."

Something tight coiled in Eliot's belly at the sudden urgency in Nate's voice.

"Nate, what's going on?"

"Not now, Eliot. Just get off the boat as fast as you can. We'll be there as soon as we can, but you need to get out now."

Eliot knew that Nate wouldn't be so insistent if he didn't have a good reason, but the problem was that getting off the boat wasn't as easy as Nate made it sound. And the other man needed to know that.

"Listen, we can't get off this boat Nate. Even if we make it up to the deck undetected and get off the boat, Hardison can't swim."

There was a moment of silence on the line, but Eliot clearly heard Nate's suppressed curse. He was still trying to map the sounds coming from the other end of the connection, trying to figure out where Nate was and who was with him. But other than the definite knowledge that Nate wasn't alone and that there were people moving and talking silently in the background, Eliot couldn't figure out the details.

Nate's voice said something, and again the sound was muffled as if Nate was holding his hand over the speaker. Then he was back on the line.

"Eliot, we're on our way. If those coordinates are right we know exactly where you are, and we're coming to get the two of you. But right now, Hardison and you need to get off the boat, no matter if he can swim or not."

Eliot drew breath to reply, to tell Nate that it was unlikely that they'd get off the boat undetected, and that even if they could he wasn't too sure he'd be able to keep Hardison above the water in his current condition, but before he could do, things started happening all at once.

Eliot heard Nate yell "Get moving, Taggert!" combined with the sound of movement and a slamming car door. And just as he was about to make one final attempt to tell Nate that getting off the boat was a bad idea right now unless there was a really good reason for it, Hardison's eyes suddenly widened and focused on a point somewhere behind his left shoulder as the door to the communications room opened behind him.

* * *

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

**TBC...**

***Leverage*Leverage*Leverage***

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Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	7. Through Fire and Water

It's been a while, hence you get an extra-long update. I couldn't reach windscryer on IM either, so I'm making up a little boat stuff as I go along. I hope you can forgive me should there be any inconsistencies.

Enjoy!

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**Chapter 6 – Through Fire and Water**

The FBI had a file on Hector Fuentes that was twice as thick as the Los Angeles phone book. They were watching his every move, every endeavor, each of his business steps. McSweeten managed the impossible and cleared a small portion of the narrow counter against one side of the van for Nate to lean against while his older partner Taggert relayed the status of the official investigation to Nate and Parker.

Taggert only gave the most important points of the investigation, most of which were things Nate and the team had already figured out at the beginning of the job. It all added up to a few simple points.

Hector Fuentes was dirty. Beyond dirty. He had his hands in most criminal activities going on in San Diego.

Some of his businesses were legal, if morally highly questionable, like the rip-off the man had pulled with their clients' auto shop.

Most of what Fuentes was doing, however, was not legal.

But the FBI couldn't make anything stick. Fuentes was incredibly slick, and nothing stuck to him. Over the past three years of surveillance, the Feds hadn't been able to get a single criminal charge against him through.

When he was through with his report, Taggert sank back in his chair and shrugged.

"I guess you guys knew most of that from your own investigation already. We're hoping that whatever is going down tonight, we'll finally be able to get a solid charge against him. The bastard is simply too clever, so far he always managed to slip through our fingers."

"Not Fuentes." Nate shook his head. "I got the impression that Fuentes isn't the brain behind the business."

Taggert inclined his head in a half-nod. "Raymond Berger. You're right there, Agent Burkovitz. Fuentes wants to be part of something, Berger makes it happen. More so, Berger is the one who makes it happen so that the police can't make anything stick to Fuentes. Three years of observation, and the Bureau knows about maybe half of the shell companies Fuentes is hiding behind. Fuentes' life is one big luxurious party. The man gets what he wants, when he wants it, and there's nothing anybody can indict him for. All Berger's work. Without that guy, Fuentes would have gone to prison a long time ago."

Well, as far as Nate was concerned, that was going to change rapidly. There was no way Fuentes was going to walk free after what he had done. Screwing over a nice, hard-working couple like their clients had been one thing, and the reason that had brought them on to this case. But taking Eliot and Hardison, that was a whole different league. That was why Fuentes was going down.

Nate cast a look at Parker, who despite the fact that she was no born actress was playing her part of the tough female FBI agent. But Nate could see the tension and worry underneath that outside demeanor, and he knew that a few hundred yards away in their own van Sophie was no less worried than the young thief was. And Nate couldn't stop the rising worry himself, either. Right now it wasn't strong enough to overpower his calm and reason, but he was acutely aware of how urgently they needed to find out where Fuentes' men had taken Eliot and Hardison. The clock was ticking against them on this one.

Nate trusted Eliot's skills and instincts to keep himself and Hardison safe until help arrived, but that didn't account for all possibilities. If Eliot was hurt, or otherwise incapacitated, or even…all bets were off. And if there was one thing Nate absolutely wasn't prepared to do, then it was letting his men get hurt.

"So, what is this DEA operation you guys got pulled in tonight all about?"

This time, it was McSweeten, the younger agent, who answered the question.

"Might be that a big bust is about to happen tonight. The DEA has informants in the San Diego drug scene, and it seems that over the past couple of weeks, there's been a big uproar. Some new player trying to push into the scene."

"And the DEA thinks it's Fuentes."

Taggert shrugged, interrupting his younger partner's recount of the events, but McSweeten didn't seem to mind to step back again.

"If there's proof, we haven't been told about it. But whenever something large scale is going down in San Diego, it's a safe bet to check if Fuentes is involved, and ninety percent of the time it turns out to be a right guess."

"Who's running the drug business in town now? Somehow I doubt that they'll just invite new competition with open arms."

Taggert laughed mirthlessly. "No, that's why everything's gone haywire over the past couple of weeks. The DEA guy who briefed us said even the informants were scared. Drug business has been in the hand of the local gangs for over a decade now. And they don't like sharing. They go up against one another over who controls which street block, so it's a safe bet they won't willingly make space for someone new."

Nate nodded, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle so that they finally started forming some sort of picture. Fuentes wanted a piece of the big and easy money, and he didn't care who he pissed off along the way. The drugs and the irate gangs would be plenty of reason why the warehouse had been so strictly guarded, by very capable men, no less. And when Berger had caught Eliot and Hardison red-handed, it must have seemed to him that the gangs were trying to make a move against the new competitor in town that Fuentes and his right hand man wanted to become.

It made sense, taking Hardison and Eliot to press them for further information. It could be a good thing, too. If Fuentes thought Eliot and Hardison knew something, it was reason to keep them alive. It would buy them the time they so desperately needed to find their missing men.

What absolutely didn't make sense if the DEA was preparing a drug bust was that they sent off two lone FBI agents for surveillance on the warehouse where the drugs were being kept.

"So how did the two of you end up here? We're on the lookout for our men, but if the DEA is about to bust someone, why are you stuck here?"

Taggert shrugged. "Word on the street is that the new guy is expecting his first big shipment. That's got all the gang bosses panties in a very tight bunch, I can tell you. So the guys who have their hands on the drug distribution in the city want to put an end to it before it even starts, at least that's word of the informants. They'll be trying to cut off the new guy's supply lines before he can even start. And the DEA is hoping for a two for one here. If the new guy is Fuentes, they can keep the drugs off the street and finally get something against Fuentes that will hold up in court. Who knows, if one of the gangs is planning something there might even be some of the bigger fish going behind bars as well."

And that, Nate mused, made no sense. No sense at all. Because the drugs were already in the warehouse building they were watching, and not wherever the DEA was planning their bust. Something stuck a chord, but Nate couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. It felt like a thought that was important, something about what Taggert had said, but as soon as he tried to focus on the thought, it vanished again.

"What's up?" McSweeten asked. "You look like you just ate something bad."

Well, there definitely was a bad taste in his mouth, but that had nothing to do with any kind of food, Nate was sure of that.

"Where is the DEA bust supposed to go down?"

McSweeten shrugged. "Private airstrip a few miles outside the city. There's a lot of different ways to get drugs into the country of course, but this is Fuentes we're talking about. He's not going to start small-scale. Which leaves getting them in by plane or by boat."

"But you don't know which it is."

The young agent shook his head. "No, we don't."

Nate nodded, his mind already running through the options. A private airfield meant the possibility for Fuentes to install his own security, and a bigger chance to avoid custom controls. Especially if he brought the drugs in on a non-scheduled flight. But the drugs were already here, and that was the part that didn't make sense at all. Why would Fuentes be expecting another shipment before he had even distributed the first one? There was no reason for Fuentes to be on any airstrip, and even less reason for him to take Eliot and Hardison there.

"So why the airstrip?"

"They didn't give us details during the briefing, but seems like they have information that an unscheduled flight from Mexico will land just before sunrise. Fuentes could get drugs from anywhere in South America in on a flight like that. Just to make sure the DEA wants to stake out all known business ventures of Fuentes, just in case something goes wrong with the takedown. That's why we're here."

Nate shook his head. "Doesn't make sense."

For the first time since their arrival, Taggert bristled somewhat at the insinuation that their orders were wrong.

"What, you think we're just wasting time here?"

"No. I'm saying it doesn't make sense because there won't be any shipment of drugs coming in on a plane today."

Disbelief showed on both agents' faces.

"What do you mean?" Taggert asked gruffly, but Nate wasn't fazed by the sudden antagonism. He only shrugged.

"The drugs are already here."

"What?"

McSweeten's eyes widened almost comically, and Taggert looked as if he was ready and willing to reach for the phone and inform his superiors. Nate gestured him to hold out just a moment longer.

"How do you know?" Taggert asked, his face not betraying what he was thinking.

"My men went into the warehouse earlier tonight. It's where they were captured. Before we lost contact, they found two hundred pounds of cocaine in an office storage room. So Fuentes already has the drugs, and from the calls we intercepted the deal is supposed to go down this morning. It doesn't make sense that he'd expect another shipment so soon, especially not since this is the first shipment ever. He needs distributors, customers, a whole damn infrastructure in this business before he restocks his supplies, and Fuentes has none of that yet. Two hundred pounds of cocaine last a while until he needs to re-supply his dealers, and he'd be stupid to store it away somewhere for any longer periods of time."

It didn't make sense, and judged by the pensive looks on Taggert and McSweeten's faces, they were starting to see it, too.

"So your informants got it wrong."

Nate looked up, surprised that Parker had broken her silence and contributed to the conversation. But Taggert immediately shook his head.

"It's sources the DEA agents trust. I mean, they could be wrong, but so far they simply haven't been. Something is going down tonight, and at least the local crime bosses are convinced that Fuentes is bringing drugs to town today."

Taggert looked at the floor of the van for a second, then he looked back up at Nate.

"Even if the gang informants have things wrong, or backwards, the main thing is that they _think_ Fuentes is going to bring in a shipment tonight. And they're planning to make their move there. Even if Fuentes already has his shipment stashed away, if they really want to cut off his supply lines they'll be making sure he gets the message and won't try again. That he won't get a chance to try again. So something is definitely going to happen."

McSweeten nodded. "Something's going down tonight, and the DEA will make arrests. Even if there are no drugs at the airfield, they'll find the drugs during cleanup. They will find the drugs and will find something to stick to Fuentes, finally."

Nate wanted to believe that it was true, he really did. But something about this whole thing was off. Something about the two agents' words had only increased his bad gut feeling about this whole thing, but still he couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly was striking a wrong chord for him.

Fuentes had drugs worth more than half a million stashed in his warehouse, ready to sell them this morning, as quickly as possible.

The FBI staked out the warehouse but until now had thought this was, if anything, a side-stage in the whole planned takedown. They had no idea that the drugs were already there until Nate told them.

Both the DEA and the local gangs thought that a shipment of drugs was going to come in by plane this morning. The DEA planned a bust, and some members of San Diego's organized crime faction wanted to send the gang equivalent of a cease and desist letter.

So either the insider information the DEA had was wrong. Or the informants had no clue what was going on, either.

McSweeten was right, whatever was going down tonight was still more than likely to get Fuentes and a number of gang members arrested and indicted.

But there were still Eliot and Hardison, caught literally somewhere between the front lines on this. And cut off from all communication, too, so there was no way for Nate to warn them about what was going on.

And something still made Nate's skin crawl and his hands long for a tumbler/glass/bottle of something, _anything_ really, to wrap around while he thought about it and tried to figure it out. Something was wrong.

"Did you get any feedback from the agents at the airstrip yet?"

Taggert nodded. "Just before you arrived, when we set up here and checked in. Plane's supposed to land in half an hour, and so far everything is dark and quiet."

Another thing that didn't make a lick of sense. Eliot and Hardison had been captured over two hours ago. Where would Fuentes men have taken them other than the airstrip, provided of course that this was where things were going to go down. Where were his men?

"What do they expect to happen?"

Taggert laughed mirthlessly. "Honestly? Nobody knows, Agent Burkovitz. You know how organized crime works. The ones who run the business are the first to know if somebody else is trying to push in. They have their own networks of informants, and you can bet your ass they know what is going down, when and where it's going down, and who is involved. And that long before the police even gets to know about it. This is the first time in years that we got an advanced warning on something big going down, not only when the shit has already hit the fan."

"But you know what those who run the organized crime around here are likely to do if someone else is trying to push in."

Another laugh, just as mirthlessly as the first one.

"They send a message, Agent Burkovitz. A very clear message. About two years ago, a bunch of rich Mexican brothers opened up a couple of strip clubs in town. The clubs were a front for pimping out Mexican girls for prostitution. It lasted all of four weeks, those guys hadn't even shown up on the police radar yet. Then one of the brothers went to pick up more illegal girls to work in their clubs. His van blew up on a deserted road a few miles out of the city on his way to the pickup. A day later, there was a mysterious and unexplained gas explosion at his brothers' house just as the remaining brothers met to make funeral arrangements.  
Another guy who was selling guns without crime boss-approval went out fishing on his private yacht. An hour out, he ended up being fish fodder himself, or at least those parts that were still left after the bomb blew up his boat.  
They crime bosses here don't wage open war, but if you step on their toes they're going to send a message. A clear and final message, and they make sure that the message hits the one it's intended for, and nobody else. You mess with them once, but never again. They'll either get you immediately, and if they can't, they'll get to your business, your supply routes, the things you own. But they will make damn sure that you don't mess with them again.  
It's near-impossible to get to Fuentes directly. The guy runs a tight ship, and only a few selected people have unlimited access to him when he's not out at public functions. But don't think for one minute that that's going to deter any of the local crime bosses from making a move against him. And if they can't get to Fuentes in person, they'll find a way to hit him in some other way. But whatever is going to happen, I'm sure something is going down tonight. These guys don't let anybody mess with them."

"Sounds like they like to blow up stuff, too." Parker said, her eyebrows pulled high.

There it was again, that twinge of…something in Nate's gut that he couldn't quite place. Something about this whole thing was off, and his instincts screamed at him to do something. But as long as he had no idea where Eliot and Hardison were, there was nothing he could do, and right now it didn't seem as if Taggert and McSweeten were going to be much help.

"We need to find my men."  
McSweeten pointed at the telephone lying on the counter. "We could call it in, tell the SWAT teams that there's undercover agents involved."

Nate shook his head immediately. Letting the law enforcement units know about Eliot and Hardison was the last thing he wanted to do and would only agree to if became unavoidable. The less people were involved in getting them free, the better. He wasn't going to entrust his men's safety to some SWAT guy with a gun and an attitude.

"No, if Fuentes' men get wind of this somehow they'll be dead. We need to know where they are and make a plan how to get them out."

"Well, as soon as something's going down at the airstrip, we're bound to be notified. If you let the agent in charge know you'll be coming, I'm sure they're going to let you be there for the takedown."

Except that there wasn't going to be a takedown because whatever was on that plane, it weren't any more drugs. Nate was sure of that. They kept turning in circles here, and it was driving him nuts.

"No, not until I'm sure that my men are even going to be there."

"Where else would they be?"

Well, that was the million dollar question.

Nate felt the two agents' eyes on him, and even more so he felt Parker's stare, and the heavy silence from Sophie coming through the earpiece. They were waiting for him to come up with a plan. It was what he did, especially when a job went awry. Nathan Ford always had a backup plan, one that worked out without anybody getting harmed.

Only, right now he was drawing a total blank.

The shrill ring of a telephone tore through the silence in the van. McSweeten actually flinched, and Taggert reached for his own pocket in the universal Pavlovian reflex of cell phone owners all around the globe. But it wasn't the agent's phone that was ringing, it was Nate's. He had no idea who would be calling him, after all Parker was sitting right next to him and if Sophie had anything to say she would have done so over the earpiece. Quickly, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and checked the display. He didn't know the number that flashed across the small screen, and with a frown on his face he answered the call.

"Hello."

_"Nate, it's Eliot."_

The relief was overwhelming, and Nate was sure that sentiment echoed in his voice.

"Eliot, thank god."

Parker's head snapped around, eyes wide, but Nate could relate to her what exactly Eliot said later on. Right now he needed to know what was going on.

"Where are you? Is Hardison with you?"

_"Yeah, he's here."_

Nate couldn't help the small sigh from escaping, and he saw Parker relax somewhat at those news. But something was up. Eliot sounded tense, and while that was a natural state for the man, there was an unnatural tightness to his voice, just as if he was putting a lot of effort into controlling himself.

"Good. You two all right?"

_"Yeah, we're good. Listen Nate…"_

But suddenly there was a scuffle over the line, and Nate felt his heart beating faster in his chest as he tried to picture what was going on. It had been only a few hours ago that he had been forced to listen to the sounds of Eliot fighting off a number of opponents without being able to do anything about it, without even being able to _see_ what was going on.

But other than earlier, this time the sounds didn't sound as serious, and were over after a second or two when Hardison's voice came through the line. And though Nate had believed Eliot's words that Hardison was all right, nevertheless it was a relief to hear their computer expert's voice directly. Even if what Hardison said wasn't something Nate wanted to hear.

_"By 'good' Eliot means that I'm good, and he's got a couple of cracked ribs, a concussion, and looks like he just went twelve rounds against a brick wall."_

And that of course explained it all. Why Eliot sounded so tense, why he didn't want Hardison to take over the phone, why he had tried to shake off the question about their wellbeing so quickly. It was typical, but unfortunately nothing they could do anything about. Eliot might be hurt, but right now he was still functioning, and Nate simply had to rely on him being able to keep that up until they had found them and could get him to a doctor.

Again, there were the sounds of two people grappling for the phone, and Nate distinctly heard the word _'idiot'_ before Eliot came back on the line.

"Eliot! Is that true?"

_"It's not that bad."_

Which, in Eliot's case, could mean anything from a bone fracture to arterial bleeding. The man didn't really have much sense for what other people considered life-threatening injuries and what not.

"Eliot. Give me an honest answer here."

A second's pause.

_"I'll manage, all right? So could we just skip this and look for a way to get us off this boat?"_

And suddenly, the interior of the van started spinning slightly as Nate's brain went into overdrive.

"You're on a _boat_?"

_"Yes, we're on a boat. And if Hardison hadn't been playing General Hospital, I would have told you that already. Berger's men brought us to one of Fuentes' boats. The big boss paid us a visit, and when we di__dn't give him the information he wanted, they pulled out of the harbor. I'm guessing that we're headed either for Mexico or for international waters. We can't get off this boat on our own, so you need to get help to us, and fast."_

Which was going to be a problem, but those Nate could deal with. Now that he knew Eliot and Hardison were alive and rather well, they would manage.

"Okay. We'll figure something out. I need the name of the boat, and your position."

Another moment of silence on the line, and this time Hardison's voice came on without the sounds of a previous struggle. Nate was unable to really place the sounds in the background, but he thought he detected the sound of typing. Where exactly Hardison had found a computer and keyboard on a boat they had been captured on was a mystery to Nate, but he knew beyond a doubt that if anybody could, it was Alec Hardison.

_"Nate? The boat we're on is called the Santa Esmeralda, we left port about an hour ago now. I've sent the coordinates of our position to your phone."_

"Hang on a second."

Nate was loathe to put the phone away form his ear even for just a moment. Right now this phone was their only connection to Eliot and Hardison, and he didn't want the line to break off prematurely, before he had gathered all the information he needed to find them and bring them home. Hell, he didn't even want to take the phone away from his ear, and that said quite a lot about both how much the situation had gotten out of hand, and how worried he was about Eliot and Hardison.

The message with the coordinates flashed across the screen, and Nate quickly pulled a file lying on the counter towards him despite McSweeten's gasped protest. He didn't really have the time to look for a sheet of paper now. Nate copied down the coordinates on the cover of the file and pushed it over towards Taggert.

"They're on a boat called the _Santa Esmeralda_ which left port about an hour ago. Get me the ownership details on that boat, and make sure that we have a way to get to their position as soon as possible."

"You got it," Taggert said, but it was McSweeten who had pulled a laptop over towards himself and was already typing. Nate had seen how quickly Hardison had gathered information like that from official databases, and he guessed that it didn't take a computer genius to get results in the same amount of time if only they were connected to the right database. And police databases were constructed for police officers – people who were notoriously bad at keeping up with modern technology – to find what they were looking for as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, Nate wished that Hardison was here, if only because he knew he could blindly rely on Hardison's information, something he couldn't say about McSweeten.

It only took a few moments, then the young agent raised his head and looked at Nate.

"The boat is registered to _Vantega Corp_. According to the register, it's a local business consulting corporation, and they claim usage on the boat for 'recreational usage'."

Nate frowned. "Is Vantega another of Fuentes' shell companies?"

McSweeten shook his head. "Possible, but if it is, it's not one of those we've been able to trace back to him yet."

"So what kind of boat is it? A yacht, or whatever kind of boat else can be used for 'recreational purposes'?"

Another shake of the head from the young agent. "Nah, it's a regular transport boat. It's only of any kind of recreational value if your definition of 'recreational' means sitting between cargo containers."

He looked up from his laptop screen. "Taking a closer look at _Vantega Corp._ might prove a definite connection to Fuentes or Berger, but seeing that they didn't show up in the investigation so far, that's going to take time."

"But it could be how he's bringing the drugs into the country, if he's not doing it by plane." Taggert fell in from the side.

Nate nodded, distantly hearing Eliot's voice call out to him through the telephone. He knew that the interruption of their call would not sit well with the two men on the boat either, but there was that gut feeling again, stronger than it had been the previous times. There was something he should be seeing, something right in front of his nose if only he arranged the puzzle pieces to form the correct picture.

The drugs in the warehouse.

The airfield raid was a bust; neither Fuentes nor his men were going to be there tonight. Nor were any gang members.

_"Nate!"_

According to the informants, Fuentes was going to get a serious warning from the local drug lords tonight.

_You mess with them once, but never again._

_They want to cut off his supply routes._

Eliot and Hardison were on a boat that most likely belonged to one of Fuentes' shell companies. On their way either to Mexico or international waters, probably to dispose of them.

_They want to cut off his supply routes._

_"Nate, damn it!"_

Mexican pimps blown up in their cars and houses, an arms dealer turned into fish fodder on his yacht.

_Sounds like they like to blow up stuff, too._

The boat was possibly how Fuentes brought the drugs into the country. Fuentes' supply route. The one the gangs wanted to cut off, once and for all.

An icy feeling settled in the pit of Nate's stomach. For a split second time seemed to stop and he felt like he was trying to move through molasses. Then he suddenly couldn't move fast enough. Bringing the phone back up to his ear, he all but barked instructions at Taggart and McSweeten.

"Get ready to get moving. Alert the coast guard, we need a chopper out to the boat's coordinates right now, and a boat waiting to get us there as soon as we get to the harbor. We need to get to them as fast as possible!"

Parker as well as the two agents were wide-eyed at the sudden sharpness and urgency of Nate's voice, but there was no time for explanations. If he was right about this, Eliot and Hardison needed to get off that boat as fast as humanly possible.

"Eliot," he snapped into the phone, feeling inexplicably breathless, "the two of you need to get off the boat."

_"That's what I'm telling you."_ Eliot sounded exasperated. _"You need to send help here to get us off."_

"No Eliot, you don't understand. You need to get off this boat right now."

_"Nate, what's going on?"_

Of course Eliot would catch on to the fact that something was up. But there were no time for explanations.

"Not now, Eliot. Just get off the boat as fast as you can. We'll be there as soon as we can, but you need to get out now."

Looking up, Nate was relieved to find that Taggert was talking to someone on the radio, and that McSweeten had powered down the laptop and seemed a bit unsure at what was expected of him now. But as long as they were getting ready to leave as quickly as possible Nate didn't care.

And of course it could never be that easy.

_"Listen, we can't get off this boat, Nate. Even if we make it up to the deck undetected and get off the boat, Hardison can't swim."_

Nate resisted the urge to groan and yell, maybe throw something against the wall in frustration. Who the hell couldn't swim these days? Everybody could swim, every-damn-body, but he simply had to have the only person in the Western Hemisphere on his team who had to beat the odds.

And the worst thing was – no matter if Hardison could swim or not, he still needed to get off the boat.

Nate put the phone away from his ear and put his hand over the speaker as he turned towards Taggert.

"The coast guard, Taggert. Get them to send out that chopper _now_."

Then he put the phone back to his ear.

"Eliot, we're on our way. If those coordinates are right we know exactly where you are, and we're coming to get the two of you. But right now, Hardison and you need to get off the boat, no matter if he can swim or not."

Nate heard Eliot draw breath to reply, but Nate would never know what the other man was going to say. The whole time the background of the conversation had been relatively silent save for a distant hum of machinery. But now suddenly there were a lot of different sounds coming through the line. There was a metallic bang that cut off Eliot's reply, a startled shout, and a grunt of extreme effort from Eliot. Hardison's voice was yelling something, but no matter how much he strained Nate could not make out what the other man was saying.

Beside him, Parker tensed, having picked up on the fact that something was going on. But Nate ignored her for the moment, instead he got up and gestured towards the young thief and the two agents. Parker and McSweeten were on their feet immediately, but Nate had no patience to wait for the older agent.

"Get moving, Taggert!"

As they climbed out of the back of the van, for the second time in less than six hours, Nate was forced to listen to the sounds of Eliot fight with somebody in an attempt to free Hardison and himself. And just like the last time, Nate could only hear, couldn't even see what was going on, let alone do anything to help.

A distant part of his brain still had the capacity left to be surprised at the fact that it was already nearly light again outside as they left the FBI van and made their way over towards their own van which was parked down the street.

But most of Nate's attention was focused on the sounds that came over the tinny speaker of his cell phone. All he heard were grunts and panted breaths, much more worrisome noise than he had heard from Eliot during the previous fight. Nate wondered just how much the younger man had downplayed his injuries in their conversation.

Nate nearly let the phone drop when suddenly, unexpectedly, another grunt of effort turned into a yell of pain, loud and sharp and definitely uttered by Eliot's voice. His grip on the phone white-knuckled, Nate sped up even more in the direction of their van.

"Eliot?"

But there was only another loud bang, a cackle and hiss of static, and then the line went dead.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The door behind him opened, but before Eliot even had the chance to react, a blow caught him between the shoulders and he stumbled forward. Hardison stood a foot or two away in the small and cramped space, shock still and completely stunned by the sudden appearance of somebody else in the communications room. Eliot felt dizzy, and he rationally knew that he was in no condition to fight anybody right now. But the only other option would be giving up, and that was something Eliot wasn't made for. So instinct overrode any caution he might have taken due to his injuries.

Eliot spun around and instinctively threw a punch. It was blind and uncontrolled, without any finesse, but Eliot felt his fist connect with flesh and skin, breaking the assailant's momentum for a second.

A short glimpse, that was all Eliot had time for.

The man who had come into the communications room was small and of a stocky built, but his immediate reaction to their presence in the room showed that he was no hired crewmember whose sole purpose was to keep the boat running. No, that man was someone who knew how to handle himself in a fight.

Eliot immediately threw a hard punch to follow the first one, but the man blocked and deflected it, throwing Eliot off balance. Under normal conditions taking the guy out would not have been a big struggle for him, but right now every single movement hurt, and the momentum and movement needed to throw a punch made bright spots dance across his vision. Eliot knew that he was only going to stand a chance if he took the man out quickly, no matter how messy that might become.

He darted to the side, a difficult feat in the small room and launched a kick at the man, trying to hit him in the back of the knees and throw him off balance. If only he could get the man to stumble, or down to his knees, he'd have him out cold in a matter of seconds. But the man anticipated the move. He shifted, only a slight movement but enough to throw Eliot's aim off completely. And suddenly Eliot was the one who found himself off balance. Just a short stumble, the fragment of a second in which Eliot's center of balance was off.

And then bright hot pain exploded in his left side. He didn't feel the blow, or the fist slamming into his side. All Eliot felt was a sudden stab of pain in his left side, knocking the breath right out of him and damn it, he had felt something shift inside that wasn't supposed to be shifting around. For eternally long seconds there was nothing but pain so strong that it blurred his vision and forced him to his knees even though he knew that he needed to stay up, that he needed to fight.

Because if he lapsed now, another blow might knock him out. And then Hardison and he were dead.

Eliot tried to get his feet back under himself, but the pain in his side was so strong that his vision blackened out and he fell back down with a cry of pain he wasn't able to suppress.

His breaths were coming in small, flat bursts, each one sending a new pulse of pain through his injured body, and with a sudden frightening clarity Eliot realized that this was it. This time, he wouldn't be able to get back up. If he had a minute to get his body back under control he'd be all right, but he didn't have that minute. His opponent wasn't stupid enough to give him that minute.

And in the split second of Eliot's epiphany, Eliot heard the sound of heavy boots beside him. If Hardison would only take the chance to try and run while the thug was otherwise occupied. If Hardison got a head start, he might have a slim chance to get off this boat on his own.

He inwardly braced himself for the blow, the knife, whatever was going to come, because Eliot knew that he wasn't going to dodge it in time.

But the blow didn't come.

There were more steps, hurried, then the resounding crack of something hard breaking, a groan and a dull thud. It took only a second or two, and before Eliot knew what was happening there was a hand on his shoulder.

"Eliot? Come on man, don't be unconscious. Not now."

Eliot groaned and turned onto his back, slowly so as not to agonize this aching, throbbing side.

"M'okay," he groaned out from behind grit teeth.

"Yeah, sure you are. You look it, too. Think you can get up?"

Eliot knew it was going to be a lesson in pain endurance, but it wasn't as if he had any other choice. They needed to get off the boat, and as the appearance of the thug had shown, they weren't safe here.

Holding his left arm against his injured side, he held out his other hand to Hardison. The other man immediately understood the unspoken request and gripped the hand tightly in his own.

"Ready?"

The answer was no, but there was no choice. Eliot nodded.

Hardison pulled and Eliot did his best to use his legs to propel himself upright again. But there was no way the movement could not tear at his injured side. Dizziness and nausea battled for dominance as the room tilted around him and for a moment Hardison's hands on his arms were the only thing keeping him upright.

Then nausea won.

Hardison barely managed to take a step to the side and half a step back as Eliot bent forward and retched up bile.

"Gross, man."

Not as gross as the coppery taste that was strong enough to overlay the taste of bile, but Eliot wasn't going to tell Hardison about that. It wasn't as if they could do anything about it, anyway.

When the retching subsided, Eliot slowly straightened up again. And though he would have never admitted it out loud, he was glad that Hardison kept his hands steady on his arms until he was standing upright again and no longer felt like he was about to keel over.

Carefully, Eliot took a small step away from the disgusting puddle of bile on the ground and looked around. The thug who had nearly taken him out was lying on the ground right next to where Eliot had fallen, unconscious and bleeding from a cut just above his ear. The shattered remains of the satellite phone were lying scattered around his head.

Eliot shook his head and looked at the other man. "You knocked him out with the phone?"

Hardison shrugged uncomfortably. "You dropped it when he knocked you down. It was the only thing I could think of."

It had probably saved both their lives, so Eliot certainly wasn't going to make any accusations. But the phone had been their only way to get in touch with Nate, and now that was gone, too.

"You said nobody was going to come in here."

He knew that his voice was sharper than usual due to the pain, and it immediately got Hardison into a defensive stance.

"I said it wasn't _likely_. There's a difference."

Eliot was too exhausted and in too much pain to argue about this. There was no choice now. They had to do what Nate had told them, and get off this boat. Eliot had no idea why the other man had been so insistent, but he knew that Nate wouldn't tell them to get off the boat if they didn't absolutely have to.

Eliot shifted again, carefully testing out his ability to move.

"We gotta get going."

Hardison's eyes widened. "Going? Where?"

"Nate said we have to get off the ship."

The younger man shook his head fervently. "No. No way man. I'm not getting in the water, you can forget that. Nate knows where we are, he'll be here soon. I say we wait it out. 'Sides, you look in no condition to go for a swim."

"Listen to me Hardison. Nate said we needed to get off this boat right now, and not to wait for them."

"Why?"

That was a good question indeed. Eliot was sure that Nate had found out more over the past hours, but there had been no time for any questions and answers.

"I don't know. But if Nate says to get off this boat, we get off the boat. And if you don't want to, so help me god, I'll make you."

He was roughed up, bleeding and hunched over to protect his injured left side. He was in no condition to fight anybody right now, but still Hardison backed down under his glare and the determination in his voice.

"Okay, so what's your plan?"

"We need to get up on deck."

Hardison nodded. "So we track back to where we came from earlier."

"No." Eliot shook his head. "The guy who's patrolling the top of the staircase will notice us long before we're even halfway up. We need to find another way out."

"Cargo hold," Hardison said immediately. Seeing Eliot's questioning gaze, he quickly explained.

"We should be able to get into the cargo hold from somewhere on this level. There should be another way up from there, though I have no idea if that's guarded as well."

Eliot nodded at the suggestion. That would have to do.

The knocked out guard didn't carry a gun. Normally, Eliot wouldn't have cared about that, but right now he was at the point where he'd have gladly taken a gun if it meant a slightly better chance for them to get out of here.

The corridor outside was still empty, and they quickly made their way farther along to where Hardison suspected the cargo hold to be. Eliot held himself back and let the other man navigate. He was too focused on moving and breathing and gritting his teeth against the pain, and that was taking up most of his conscious effort. They arrived in front of a solid steel bulkhead and he had no recollection of how exactly they had gotten here. Eliot could only hope and pray that they didn't encounter anybody else on their way, because he'd not be able to do much about that.

Hardison opened the bulkhead and then they were in the ship's cargo hold. The remarkably empty cargo hold. There were no containers, no cargo, nothing. Just a large empty room and another closed door on the other side.

"That's got to be it."

Eliot nodded, having no breath to spare to say anything in response. They quickly made their way across the cargo hold, but Eliot stopped Hardison as the other man made move to open the reinforced steel door.

"What?"

"If there's anybody out there, we need to be quick." Talking hurt, and it used way too much breath that Eliot didn't have left to spare. But he needed to make sure Hardison understood.

"If there's anybody out there, leave them to me. Grab something that floats and get the hell off this boat, do you understand me?"

If Hardison's eyes got any wider, they'd pop right out of his head. "What?"

"Nate and the others will be here soon. We only need to stay afloat until they do. But I need to know that you'll really get off this boat. Because once we go up there, we won't have time to discuss things."

Hardison's eyes stayed wide, but after a few seconds he swallowed visibly, Adam's apple bopping up and down, and nodded. "Okay."

"Good."

He nodded at Hardison, and the younger man opened the door. The metallic sound echoed loudly in the empty cargo hold, making Eliot wince. Their chances to make it out of this undiscovered were slim to nonexistent, but maybe he'd be able to get Hardison off this boat with something to hold him above the water until Nate arrived. Eliot didn't think they'd both make it out of here alive.

The door opened to a narrow corridor, and at the end a steep set of metal stairs led upstairs. Daylight was filtering in from above. Eliot hoped that by some stroke of luck they'd not be spotted right away.

Eliot took the lead as they hurried along and climbed the stairs up first. As he neared the top he stopped for a moment and listened.

Nothing but the sound of the engines and waves and wind. They'd just have to make a run for it. Eliot gestured for Hardison to follow him, then he took a deep breath and started running.

The last steps on the stairs were pure agony with the increased speed, a pain Eliot could do nothing against but bite his lip and try to ignore it.

The deck was bright in the morning light, and the smell of saltwater and boat diesel hit his nose immediately as he surfaced. There was nobody in the immediate vicinity, and a quick scan of their surroundings confirmed Eliot's silent suspicion that they had surfaced near the bow of the ship. That meant they had to go over the side. With Hardison's steps right behind him, Eliot ran even faster, keeping his eyes out for anything that would help him keep Hardison afloat as soon as they got into the water. A life-saver, life-jacket, hell, he'd settle for a buoy or a wooden board. Anything.

"Hey!"

The call came from behind and above, and it made Eliot's blood run cold. Hardison's steps slowed, but Eliot grabbed his arm and dragged him along towards the railing.

"Keep going, Hardison!"

It was more of a winded hiss than an actual command, but Hardison seemed to have heard. He started running faster again. Just a few more feet, then they could jump off. That wouldn't save them, but it would put some more distance between their captors and them.

"Stop right there!"

"Keep going!" Eliot yelled, not letting go off Hardison's arm. "Keep running and jump!"

And Hardison did. Eliot was convinced that he was going to jump, too, no matter that he couldn't swim. But Eliot would never find out, because suddenly everything happened at once.

The faceless voice yelled "Stop!" again, and a shot rang out loudly over the sounds of the engines and the wind around them. A searing pain flared up in Eliot's left leg, but before he even had the chance to think about what had happened, suddenly the whole boat lurched beneath them. The deck moved and shifted, and for a moment Eliot lost the ground beneath his feet. He was thrown into the railing, and then suddenly it was all gone, the deck, the boat, the gunfire. Eliot was falling, and the only thing he could see were flashes of bright blue sky, water so dark it seemed nearly black, and the bright glare of an explosion.

* * *

**TBC...**

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Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	8. Dead in the Water

Once more I can only apologize for the delay, and tell you all how awesome you are for sticking with me. Actually this chapter was supposed to contain two perspectives, but since it takes ages for me to get anything done right now, I decided to post it as soon as the first scene was done.

Enjoy!

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**Chapter 7 – Dead In The Water**

Everything was black. There was no up and no down, no left and no right. But he was falling, soaring through nothingness, and deep down he knew that it was all wrong, that there was something he should be doing, but it was all too far away, too distorted to try and figure it out.

Then the fall ended.

The pain of the impact was all-encompassing. Every single cell in his body screamed with it, and for a moment the darkness turned black in blissful oblivion. Eliot wished for nothing more than to be able to let go of it all and slide into unconsciousness. But while he had been slipping away during the fall, the pain had pulled him back, and it all came crashing down at him at once.

Water.

Pain.

Sinking.

He was in the water, the pain was so bad that he could barely move, and he was sinking down, slowly but surely gliding farther and farther away from the surface, and from survival.

Air.

He needed to breathe.

And no matter that he was only half-conscious, no matter the pain and the exhaustion, instinct overrode all that. Pure primal instinct. He needed to breathe. But around him was only water.

He started kicking, blindly and without plan or finesse. Without even making sure that it was really up he was swimming and not down. His body was screaming for air and Eliot had no choice but to comply.

_Hardison._

The thought made him stop for the fragment of a second. The boat. The explosion. Hardison had been there with him when it had happened. Hardison had to be in the water with him somewhere, and he couldn't swim. They had been right next to each other when the explosion had thrown them over the railing. He had to be around somewhere.

A distant, cruel and egocentric part of his brain was screaming at him to just forget about Hardison and get to the surface before he drowned. He could dive down and look for the other man once he had taken a breath.

But Eliot knew that if he surfaced now, he wouldn't find Hardison again. He didn't have the strength to dive back down, to dive this deep, to hold his breath for more than a few seconds. If he surfaced now, Hardison was going to die.

Eliot opened his eyes.

The water was murky around him, dark with shapeless even darker things floating around him. Where to go? Where was Hardison? Eliot didn't have time to for a second or third attempt at finding the other man. Hell, he probably didn't have enough air left for one single attempt. But he had to try.

He scanned the dark water around him as quickly as he could. Hardison could be anywhere. He could be yards away for all Eliot knew. He could be dead already.

There!

There was no way to know if it was Hardison. It was a darker shape in the dark and murky water, bigger than the other dark shapes. It could be Hardison. It could as well be a fish, seaweed, or some part of the boat that had been blown here by the explosion. But it was Eliot's only shot.

He kicked his feet, agony flaring up his left leg and entire left side as his injuries protested against the movement. His lungs were burning and he had to forcefully stop himself from trying to breathe air where there was only water. Then his outstretched fingers brushed against fabric, and Eliot stopped thinking.

Tightening his grip he started kicking towards the surface. Movement used up oxygen, oxygen Eliot didn't have. The surface of the water was above him, light glittering teasingly at him. He was close, but he could as well have been miles away. He might make it if he just let go of Hardison – if it even _was_ Hardison – but Eliot's hand only tightened its grip and he kicked harder.

He needed air, that was the only thought on his mind. Air. His chest was burning, everything was hurting, and bright spots started to dance on the edge of his vision. Maybe another four or five seconds before he lost consciousness, Eliot knew that he didn't have more time than that.

Then his head broke the surface and he drew in a deep breath, air mixed with salt-water and smoke. Eliot drew a deep heaving breath that had his broken ribs groaning in pain, making him feel light-headed from the sudden flow of oxygen. Panting, he pulled against the heavy load pulling him down, relieved beyond measure when Hardison's head appeared above the water, eyes wide and mouth opened wide to draw in a deep breath that was half air, half ocean water. Hardison was flailing, must have been moving and struggling the entire time Eliot had pulled him towards the surface, and now as he breathed in water he started coughing.

"Hardison!"

Speaking over the sound of the other man's coughs and struggles was a useless endeavor. Hardison was disoriented, confused, and more than a little panicked. Eliot saw the wild look in the other man's eyes, and knew that Hardison wasn't entirely there. All he seemed to know was that he was in the water. And just as Eliot's instincts had overruled conscious thought earlier on, right now Hardison wasn't thinking clearly. He knew he was in the water, and that he couldn't swim. So he latched onto the first thing in his vicinity that he thought would keep him above the water.

Eliot couldn't react as an arm wrapped around his throat, and Hardison's flailing weight pulled him under the water again. The water closed over his head, icy against his skin. Hardison's grip was painful, aggravating Eliot's injuries and pulling him farther and farther under the water. Eliot needed to get them back to the surface, and he needed for Hardison to stop pulling them down.

Frantically, he started tearing at Hardison's hands, trying to get them free. Hardison wasn't thinking clearly, so he must have thought Eliot wanted to push him off and let him drown. Probably, Hardison didn't even know it was Eliot he was clinging to. But they needed to get back to the surface, and Eliot couldn't afford to be gentle about it.

The water slowed his movements, and there was no way for him to punch Hardison and break him out of his frantic struggles like that. Instead he took a hold of the arm holding him down and pulled at it until he had enough leeway to slip out from underneath Hardison's hold. As soon as his grip loosened, Hardison panicked and frantically struggled to get a grip on Eliot again. But Eliot pushed them around, moved behind Hardison in the faint hope that this position would make it easier for him to control the other man's movement.

Surface.

They needed to get back to the surface, that was all that counted now.

With his good right arm across Hardison's chest from behind, Eliot kicked back to the surface. As soon as they broke through, Hardison started gulping down air, hands going up in search for something to hold on to, something that would give him the feeling he was holding himself above the water. The movements were jerky, frantic, and they threatened to pull them under again.

"Hardison! Damn, it stop!"

Hardison buckled and struggled, nearly slipping out of Eliot's grasp in the process. His hands came up, trying to reach over his head at Eliot, to grab a hold of something again. Distantly, Eliot could relate to the panic of being in an element that Hardison knew would kill him without anything to hold on to, but he needed for the other man to calm down.

No matter how much Eliot kicked his legs against the downwards pull, the struggling and shifting pulled them under the surface again and again. Never as deeply as the first time, but each time the water closed over his face or head, Hardison panicked anew. And each time Eliot had to get them back to the surface cost him strength he didn't have left to spare.

Eliot tightened his grip around Hardison's chest and in a desperate attempt brought his free hand out of the water and aimed to hit Hardison. The movement was awkward and tore so badly at his injured side that his vision blackened out for a second. But the blow struck home, and that was all that counted. It ended up as something between a slap and a punch, hitting somewhere between Hardison's cheek and chin. It wasn't a hard punch, but it shocked the other man into stillness for just a second. Eliot tightened his arm and put his mouth right next to Hardison's ear.

"Hardison! It's me, Eliot. I've got you, but I need you to stop fighting me. Do you understand me?"

Hardison stilled, breathing hard and his eyes wide.

"Hardison!"

"Eliot?" Hardison finally pressed out, hands still hovering insecurely above the water, ready to start grasping for something again at a moment's notice.

"Yeah. I've got you, I won't let you drown. But you need to stop struggling."

"I…I can't…I'm going under…I can't…"

"I'm not going to let you go under, Hardison. But if you keep struggling, you're gonna kill us both!"

To underline his words, Eliot slid his arm more firmly against Hardison's chest. Hardison's head was leaning against his right shoulder, and beneath them Eliot was kicking furiously to keep them afloat. It was already hard to do so while Hardison was still, if he started struggling again Eliot wasn't sure for how long he could keep this up.

Finally, after a couple of seconds that seemed like an eternity, Hardison shakily brought his hands up to his own chest and wrapped them around Eliot's forearm. The desperation to hold on to something was still there, but at least for now he wasn't struggling. His grip on Eliot's arm was painfully tight, but compared to the other places of agony in his body, it was the least of his problems for now.

"Good. I've got you. Just give me a minute."

Hardison nodded against Eliot's shoulder, and for the first time since they had been thrown overboard Eliot allowed himself to relax marginally. A small step, but at least they weren't about to drown anymore. Time to take stock.

Eliot's head was hurting, his chest was on fire, and trying to breathe with Hardison's weight pressing down on him was an experience in agony, no matter that the water was taking off some of the burden. And then there was the pain in his left leg. Eliot remembered fragments from just before the explosion. The sound of a gunshot, the stinging pain in his leg – it didn't take a genius to figure out that he had been hit. But while there was pain, it was tolerable. Probably it was a graze and not a through and through, and if it had hit anything vital he'd probably be dead already. But even a bullet graze meant he was losing blood. The water was cold, and if he lost too much blood his body temperature was going to drop drastically, and soon.

"What happened?" Hardison panted, jerking when water from a bigger wave lapped at his face.

"Boat blew up," Eliot replied, admittedly not very elaborately. "Bomb, probably."

And for the first time since the explosion, Eliot looked up, surprised to find that their fall and the struggles had taken them a distance away from the boat. And part of it was still there, which was probably the most surprising thing. Eliot remembered the explosion being to his left, which would put it at the stern of the boat. Probably in the engine room, at least that's where he would plant a bomb if he wanted to sink a ship. He didn't even want to contemplate the fact that they had been right next to the engine room until minutes before the explosion. Without Nate's warning, they'd probably be dead now. And the irony was that if they had already been in the water by the time the bomb blew up, the shockwave might have killed them, too.

But the explosion couldn't have been as big as Eliot thought. The front of the boat looked undamaged. It was only because they had been at the bow of the boat that they hadn't been hit by the blast directly. The explosion had been strong enough to blast debris and burning parts all over the place, but the worst of the impact seemed to have happened when they had been under water. It had been a whole lot of damn luck that they hadn't been killed by some part of the explosion.

With the stern of the boat torn open below the waterline, the boat was going to sink, and it wouldn't take long until it was going under. But it hadn't blown up entirely, and there was the chance that someone had survived the explosion further towards the front of the boat. But even if someone had, they were busy worrying about their own survival right now, and didn't pose a threat Eliot had to worry about. There was enough on his plate as it was, anyway.

"Eliot?" Hardison's voice was rough and breathless, and more than just a little scared. "What now?"

Eliot had no idea. Hardison might think they were relatively safe now, but Eliot knew they were quickly running out of time. _He_ was quickly running out of time. There was only one thing that would be able to save them. "Nate. He's coming. He said so."

Speaking hurt, and Eliot was starting to feel dizzy. Nate had said he was on his way, and Eliot trusted him. Nate was going to come. Eliot just wasn't sure if he could hold out until then.

Eliot tried to keep his movements as calm and economically as possible, kicking steadily as he tried to move them slowly but steadily away from the sinking boat. The sea had settled back to a relative calm by now, but still the water occasionally sloshed over them. Hardison was struggling hard to remain calm, Eliot could tell. But still, whenever the water broke over them, his hands tightened painfully around Eliot's arm and he started struggling. Eliot had hitched the younger man as high out of the water as he could without drowning himself, but that meant he was lying much lower above the waterline as Hardison was. Even the much smaller movements of the water swapped over his face, lapping over mouth and nose and interrupting the regular breathing he tried to – _needed_ _to_ –keep up in order to keep them above water.

"Hardison."

Speaking was too strenuous. Speaking hurt his ribs, breathing hurt his ribs, and he had no strength left to spare to force down the pain. He could only hope and pray that what he was going to say next wasn't going to send Hardison into another fit of panic, because then they'd both be dead. But he wasn't going to last much longer, and he needed Hardison's help to keep them above water.

"Yeah?"

"I need…need you to help me out."

Hardison stiffened against him, and Eliot guessed that by now it was impossible not to notice the exhaustion in his voice, and that it had to sound anything but reassuring. He knew it was only a matter of seconds before the other man was going to get restless again. "What?"

"I need you to…start kicking."

"Kicking?" And yeah, the squirming started, frantic and jerky, making it near impossible for Eliot to keep them steady above the water. But he had to, because if they went under again, Hardison was only going to panic more. Already he was just barely this side of hyperventilating.

"I can't…I can't swim, you know that!"

"Not talking about…swimming. I got it covered. But I need help. Just…just kick your legs, okay?"

Hardison stiffened in Eliot's hold, and for a moment Eliot was afraid that this was the second of calm before the freak-out that would drown them both. But then Hardison gave an experimental kick of his legs. The movement shifted him in Eliot's previously secure old, and Hardison jerked, hands reflexively clutching at Eliot's arm so tightly that his nails dug into Eliot's skin even through the fabric of his shirt. Hardison dug an elbow into his chest as he jerked around, and the pain was so bad that Eliot went under water for a second, too dazed with pain to keep himself afloat. His vision was blurring and he couldn't breathe because of the pain, but he kicked himself back before Hardison's head went under water. His own mind was running through a silent plea, a mantra directed at Hardison that he wished he was able to transport telepathically.

_Please don't panic. Please don't panic. Whatever you do, just don't panic._

"I got you. Just…tread water, okay?"

And Hardison did. Hesitantly at first, shifting them around more than he was actually helping keep them above the water. It were jerky movements, but Eliot was grateful for them. Underneath his arm, he could feel Hardison's heart beat a frantic tattoo in the younger man's chest. Hardison was scared, but his trust in Eliot's hold on him seemed to outweigh the fear for the moment. That was all Eliot could ask for, even if at first the movement served only to tilt them even more precariously in the water than it actually kept them afloat. After a minute or two, Hardison found a way to kick his legs that didn't constantly shift him from left to right. The fact that he didn't slide out of Eliot's hold seemed to encourage him, and it didn't take long until he had found a rhythm he seemed comfortable with.

Eliot breathed a barely audible sigh of relief as he slowed the movement of his own legs. With Hardison treading water, he didn't need to keep both of them above water on his own anymore. Even if it wasn't much, it was preserving some strength, and maybe it would buy them a few minutes. Nate was coming for them, he didn't doubt that for a second. He only had to keep them alive until then.

Hardison was still hitched high on Eliot's shoulder in an attempt to keep his head as far above water as possible. But the other man's weight was bearing down on Eliot, and he barely kept his own head above the surface. Already, the water was lapping at his cheeks, and every other moment a swirl of water or a wave would make the water lap over his face. It was impossible to keep up a normal breathing rhythm without breathing in water, and he barely dared to open his mouth wide enough to breathe properly for fear of accidentally sucking saltwater into his lungs.

And Eliot was freezing. He was feeling cold all over, and he knew what meant. He had lost too much blood, and probably had internal injuries to go along with it. His body was shutting down from exhaustion and shock, and his body temperature was dropping. They were lucky if he still had a few minutes more left in him, but that was it. They had run cons on a close schedule before, but this was no con. This was Hardison's life at stake, and Eliot's own. Nate didn't have much time to come find them.

Already, Eliot couldn't feel his left leg anymore. He felt himself treading water with his right, but he had no idea if his left leg was still moving or not. And the numbness was spreading. The fingers in his left hand were dead, and the weak movements of his left arm didn't really help to keep them above water. He could only feel his right arm because Hardison was still holding on to it with bone-crushing force.

But Hardison was still kicking, the movement of his legs strong and regular now. He was doing the largest part of keeping them above water, but Eliot wasn't stupid enough to point that out to the other man. Hardison was barely holding it together as it was. Eliot wasn't going to risk the other man's precarious hold on his calm.

"Eliot."

It was a definite sign of his exhaustion that it took Eliot a moment to realize that the other man was talking to him. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that his ears were under the water all the time now as it cost too much strength to raise his head higher. Eliot drew a deep breath – _pain, it hurt, paingodithurttobreathehurtsomuch_ – and kicked his good leg some more to rise a little out of the water.

"Yeah?"

"Your teeth are chattering, man."

He hadn't noticed, but it was true. His teeth were chattering, jaw moving beyond any control. And judged by the worried tone in his voice, Hardison knew that it was a bad sign.

"Yeah."

It was the only thing he could press out in between the shaking and his struggles for something akin to a regular breathing.

"You cold?"

He would have laughed, if he hadn't been sure that would cause him to drown.

"Yeah."

He wasn't a conversationalist on a good day, but this was worrying even him. And if he noticed it, Hardison was bound to notice as well.

"I'm not cold. Don't get me wrong, I'm miles away from warm, but you sound arctic, you know?"

It took a few panted breaths until Eliot felt ready to give an answer that consisted of more than one syllable.

"Injuries…make me cool…out faster…"

And suddenly Hardison stiffened, slowing the movement of his legs for a second before he picked up again, more irregular and jerky than before.

"Tell me you're not bleeding."

Eliot couldn't quite understand the reason for Hardison's sudden panic. Of course he was bleeding. He had been an assortment of cuts and bruises even before that gunshot had missed his leg, but Hardison knew that. Eliot didn't get it. His mind was getting fuzzy, beginning to think thoughts that got lost somewhere along the synapses, leaving his brain in a blurry mess. Hardison didn't know about the bullet graze. But Eliot was not about to tell him about it, either.

"Why?"

"Sharks, man. We're in California. I've seen _Jaws_, all four parts of it. Even the crappy one in 3D. I know how this works. One of us loses a drop of blood, and all the great whites in the Pacific ocean change direction with murder in their eyes."

He leaned his head to the right, staring intently at the water as if he was able to determine the presence of any great white sharks beneath from two inches above the surface. Eliot had a lecture about the likelihood of them ending up as a shark's dinner snack on his lips, but no energy left to do so. He was bleeding. But sharks didn't react to human blood. Of course, that didn't mean a curious shark might not try to take a bite out of them to see if they were edible.

If that happened, as unlikely as it might be, there was nothing they could do against it anyway.

"No sharks."

It didn't seem to assure Hardison in any way, and that might have to do with the fact that his voice was barely above a whisper by now. But it was all Eliot had the strength to offer.

He was fading fast, and soon he was going to have to let go.

Hardison was keeping them above the water nearly all by himself now, still blissfully unaware of that fact. But Eliot knew he could not expect the other man to carry his dead weight if he lost consciousness. It would pull Hardison down. No, as soon as he lacked the strength to move even a little, he was going to let go. Hardison could make it if he didn't panic and kept on kicking. On his own he could make it. There was the risk that he'd freak out and drown, of course. But Eliot would have to trust Hardison's survival instinct to keep him over the water until Nate came with help. Hardison could do it, Eliot knew that. He was doing it now, and it was only the _thought_ that he couldn't swim, the thought that he'd undoubtedly drown if left in the water on his own, that was still standing in his way.

Eliot couldn't tell for how long they drifted in the water. It seemed endless. Timeless. There was just them, and the endless expanse of water that was going to swallow them up if Nate didn't come. He had no idea where the remains of the boat were, or how far they had drifted away from it. But soon the boat would be gone. And not long after, they'd be gone. And then there'd only be water.

Even now it was pulling at them, lapping over Eliot's face, and each time it got harder and harder to raise his head clear of the water again. It would be so much easier to just stop his struggles. He didn't have the strength left, and while Eliot was not the kind of guy to give up, ever.

But he was cold, all that was not numb was the constant pain that seemed to be everywhere. He was tired, and right now it just seemed so easy to give in and let go.

At least then it would be over.

Something jerked at him, sending every nerve ending alive with agony. He drew a deep breath, inhaling water and air and pain. Hands were clawing at his good arm, bruising and scratching at him, but he barely felt the pressure over the pain that engulfed his entire body. He was coughing up blood and water, the pain tearing him brutally out of the blissful state of floating he had comfortably wrapped himself in.

It took a few moments for him to realize that the loud noise over the water in his ears was the sound of his own name, shouted over and over until it penetrated through the haze in his head.

"Eliot!"

Hardison sounded panicked, terrified even, and his kicking had become wild and irregular, jostling them around in the water. Eliot had no idea what was going on. He barely remembered why they were in the water. All he knew was that he was in pain, and that Hardison's movement and panic were not helping.

Neither was the coughing that was tearing at him from the inside out.

"Eliot! Damn it, answer me!"

Eliot couldn't, but he tightened his arm around Hardison's chest, no matter that it made the pain even worse. It was a sign that he was still here, and that he had heard. Hardison stilled, if only a little. His movements were no longer frantic and uncontrolled, and he was clinging to Eliot's arm with painful intensity.

"Wha…"

"Don't you let go! What were you thinking, you asshole? You let go and I drown! Do you want to kill me?"

Eliot had no clue what the other man was talking about, but he could fill in the blanks. He must have drifted off, letting go of his hold on Hardison as he lost consciousness. Only, Hardison thought he had tried to let him go to get rid off the burden. He needed to make him understand that Hardison could only hold out until Nate got here if he let Eliot go, and not the other way around.

"Hardison," he slurred out, his voice so weak that it was nearly inaudible over the sound of wind and water around them and the chattering of his teeth. "Need…listen t'me. I can't…gonna pull you…under. Gotta let…lemme go."

The quick burst of adrenaline was wearing off fast, and already Eliot's vision was blurring around the edges. He couldn't focus his gaze enough to see Hardison, but he felt the other man stiffen against him as his words finally sank in. And, if possible, his reaction once he understood, was even more fierce than before.

Hardison held Eliot's arm in a vise-like grip as if he was trying to pull him over his shoulder, and he kept shaking his head against Eliot's shoulder as he wildly kicked his legs, jostling through the water.

"Don't you let go, Eliot! Don't you dare to let go, do you hear me? You made me jump off this ship, you're not allowed to check out now! Not until Nate is here, do you get that? I'm gonna punch you if you try to let go one more time!"

Nearly the same words, but with a totally different meaning behind them. Eliot would have appreciated the sentiment, if he had been more than dimly aware of it.

Eliot Spencer never gave up.

Only this time, he didn't have a choice.

There was water closing over his face, and reflexively he moved his left arm to propel himself higher in the water. There was a sharp stab of pain, all over his left side, and without conscious thought he sucked in a breath of air. But there was only water where there should have been oxygen, and distantly Eliot found himself wondering about that as everything turned dark.

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**TBC...**

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Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


	9. Come Hell or High Water

Erm...yeah. A new chapter. Who would have thought, right? There are no words for how sorry I am. That delay wasn't planned, and I had most certainly not given up on the story. I really don't know why it took so long for me to get it going again, but at some point in the middle of this chapter it simply got stuck and I couldn't get past that point. But now the flow has returned, and the remaining (I think two) chapters should come a lot more easily.  
If you want, just take time and skip back a few chapters to find out what this story was all about. Trust me, I needed to re-read the previous parts for a whole bunch of details, too. ;-)

I hope you can forgive me.

Another short note before I let you read the chapter - I know nothing about open water rescue. **Nothing**. I googled. And googled. And googled. But still, if anybody who knows more about this than I do is going to read this, please don't run away screaming. There are bound to be procedural mistakes in this, but just go with the flow of the chapter on this one. Although, if you discover some definite mistakes, just let me know so that I can fix them.

Enjoy!

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**Chapter 8 – Come Hell or**** High Water**

"How did you know they were going to strike at the boat?"

Nate had been staring at the grey expanse of the ocean in front of them, willing the Coast Guard boat they were on to go faster, but upon Taggert's inquiry he turned his head. Over the sound of the engines and the wind, he hadn't even heard the Agent approach him.

After the hectic ride that had brought them on this boat, Nate had simply needed a few moments on his own. Agents Taggert and McSweeten had followed them out of the surveillance van and into the team's own, much faster, vehicle without a word of doubt or question, but Nate had known that sooner or later the questions would come. Especially since after Nate's sickening realization that Eliot and Hardison were trapped on a boat that in all likelihood was going to blow up sometime soon, their cover stories and excuses had grown thinner and less worked out than was Nate's usual standard.

Sophie, who had been waiting for Nate's and Parker's return in the back of the van, and who fortunately had had the presence of mind to change out of her evening dress and into a pantsuit she had stored there earlier, had been introduced merely as Agent Levine, 'handler' of the alleged undercover agents Eliot and Hardison were in the eyes of the two real agents. They didn't even have a badge with Sophie's picture in the corresponding ID, and it was pure luck that neither Taggert nor McSweeten thought to ask for one as they all settled in the back of the van while Nate slid into the driver's seat and started racing the car towards the marina.

He made Taggert place the call to the Coast Guard to inform them about their upcoming arrival because it was a damn sure fact that the Coast Guard was going to check the ID of an FBI Agent before they readied a boat for them. And right now, the one thing Nate absolutely couldn't risk was that there'd be a boat ready for them by the time they arrived at the marina. If there was one thing he was sure of, then that they needed to get to Hardison and Eliot before it was too late. There was no other choice, and if he had been sharp or short with the real agents at some point along the way, it had been because of this absolute need to get his men off that boat before they were harmed even further.

Nate glanced away from Taggert's face, his eyes magnetically drawn to the cloud of smoke that had appeared on the horizon about fifteen minutes ago. They had been too far away to see any flames or the explosion as such, but Nate didn't need to have seen it to know exactly what had happened. By now the smoke was already dissolving, the dark cloud expanding and getting lighter as it drifted away with the wind, and Nate didn't want to contemplate what that could mean for the condition of the boat, or whether or not it was still above the water.

Something in Nate's chest had tightened when the Lieutenant had first pointed towards the column of smoke in the sky, and that feeling hadn't let up until now. It had been the main reason why he had left the safe shelter of the helm and had gone to the deck, not caring that the spray of the waves hit him as the boat cut through the water as fast as the Captain thought was safe. He needed to breathe against the iron band clenching his gut together, but not even out here in the clear sea air had he been able to manage.

Finally, he tore his eyes away from the sea to look at Taggert again.

"Because you didn't know about it."

The Agent looked genuinely confused.

"What?"

Nate shrugged, as if it all should make sense easily.

"Planes are rich people's toys. And even unscheduled flights to private airstrips are risky. The boat was the much more surreptitious choice, and for someone who wants to smuggle drugs into the country for the first time, surreptitious is the way to go. Fuentes loves to brag and show of his wealth, but he isn't stupid enough to risk getting busted because he wanted to smuggle drugs in style. And none of you guys, neither the DEA nor the FBI-Agents watching him, even had the boat on their radar."

He shrugged again. "The rest is easy. Just because the authorities don't know how Fuentes is getting the drugs into the country doesn't mean the guys who run the drugs in this city don't know. They always do. And if they don't, they know how to find out. It would put them out of business real fast if they didn't."

Taggert thought for a moment, processing the line of thought. Then he nodded his head into the direction of the smoke they were still heading towards.

"And that made you sure they were going to blow it up?"

Nate nodded solemnly, forcing his gaze away from the destruction they were heading towards. The smoke had mostly cleared by now, no longer as scarily black as it had been just minutes earlier. But that might be because they were getting closer now. Close enough to make out darker shapes in the distance, and Nate had to stop himself before he started looking for shapes in the water at a distance where he wouldn't be able to make out the necessary details, anyway.

"You said it's their MO. They blew up those Mexican pimps, and that arms dealer on his yacht. Besides, it solves two things at the same time. It cuts off their competitor's supply line. Not to mention that it's one hell of a warning. And if they get real lucky, they hit the competitor with it right away."

"But this time they didn't manage to hit Fuentes."

Nate shook his head and pushed away from the railing. "No, they didn't. I don't think they expected to, though. Fuentes is well-protected; if they wanted to get to him they'd have to do more than plant a bomb on a boat he's never going to be on. Besides, Fuentes is a flighty playboy. Maybe they figure a destroyed boat and a lost shipment of drugs are enough to scare him off this particular business venture."

Taggert wanted to say something else, but at that moment a voice behind them called out to them.

"Agent Taggert! Agent Burkovitz!"

Nate turned at the call and immediately hurried back towards the cabin of the search and rescue boat, Taggert following suit. It was just them on board along with the Seamen and two Lieutenants from the Coast Guard. Nate had been reluctant to allow his team to get split up yet again, but in the end he hadn't been left with a choice. Only two of them had been allowed to come, and there had been no time for discussions. So Nate and Taggert had gone, while Sophie, Parker and McSweeten had stayed behind.

The Seaman who had called out to them stepped back and allowed Nate and Taggert to step into the relative shelter of the boat's cabin. The sea was calm today, but they were bracing it at high speed, and the cabin shut out the sound of the wind and spray and most of the sound of the engines. One of the Lieutenants, Nate had already forgotten his name even though the man had introduced himself, turned towards them upon their entry.

"The coordinates you gave correspond with the visible accident site; our ETA is three minutes. Two more boats are on their way, but if we need a MedEvac, we'll have to wing it. Two of our choppers are tied up in a search and rescue thirty miles north, and the third is down for maintenance. Long Beach is sending us one of their birds, but it's still about 20 minutes out."

Nate nodded, already itching to get out on deck again. They were getting close enough to the site of the explosion to look out for Eliot and Hardison, and he wanted to be there when they started searching.

"One more thing."

The Lieutenant's voice was all business, and Nate knew this was going to be the time of rules and admonishments.

"I know you got two men out there, Agent Burkovitz. And we're going to find them. But I have a job to do, and that is to pull everyone out of that water who needs help. Everyone, even if we find some of the perps first and not your agents. If that happens, I can't have you interfere with how I do my job, is that understood?"

Nate nodded, albeit grudgingly. He knew that the Coast Guard couldn't make any distinctions, but as far as he was concerned, the people who had kidnapped his men with the intent to kill them would just have to wait in line as far as the rescue was concerned.

"Understood."

While the Seamen prepared everything that obviously needed preparing for the rescue, Nate went back towards the boat's bow and looked out over the wreckage. Now that they were close and their speed was slower, it was possible to make out the gruesome details of what had happened. There was no trace of the boat anymore, at least nothing discernible. Some large parts of debris were floating quite a distance away, and Nate felt hope rise that maybe Eliot and Hardison had found something to hold on to until they arrived.

Other than the few larger remains of the boat, here was a huge field of debris floating on the surface, thousands of pieces, and all of them too small for one man, much less two, to hold on to. No matter how much Nate strained his eyes, he saw neither Eliot nor Hardison. Something dark and ugly was rearing in his gut, and no matter how much Nate fought it, he couldn't quell the feeling entirely. Behind him, there was activity on deck, seamen donning wetsuits and preparing gear while two of them were on the lookout, binoculars raised as they scanned the water.

Nate didn't even know where to look. It was hard to tell where the boat had been at the time of the explosion. And even if he knew exactly where, that still didn't give Nate any idea where Eliot and Hardison had been at the moment the boat blew up. If they had been below deck, chances weren't good that they had survived.

He couldn't think like that. Couldn't allow himself to think like that.

Instead, Nate clutched the railing and scanned the water. Hardison couldn't swim, which meant that every minute counted. Every damn _second_ counted. Eliot was injured, and Hardison had probably panicked as soon as they had gone into the water. If they had still been conscious when they went into the water. Or even alive.

A shudder ran down Nate's spine that had nothing to do with the cold or the wind. They needed to find them right now.

But minutes passed, slow and agonizing minutes during which the rescue boat slowly drifted through the field of debris. Nate tried to look everywhere at once, but it was simply so hard to discern something amongst the mass of floating debris. Every time he thought he saw something that might be a head, or a body floating on top of the water, it turned out to be nothing but yet another piece of the boat, a cargo container or a random piece of padding that only looked like the fabric of a shirt, or a jacket.

The clock kept on ticking. Nate felt his own stomach clench at the thought that his men might already be dead, and he quickly chased those thoughts away. He was only grateful that they were out of com range, because he didn't think he could have dealt with Parker's and Sophie's concern on top of his own feelings right now.

Once they had found Eliot and Hardison, he was going to deal with whatever fallout was going to come. But first they needed to find them.

Nate nearly didn't notice when they did. He was straining so much to see something in the water that it took a moment to register that something was going on behind him. There had been a constant chatter of conversation, the lookouts yelling when they thought they saw something, the other members of the Coast Guard directing their gazes to spots where they thought somebody might be drifting on the surface of the water. The first few times Nate had heard one of them call out, he had gotten excited, but with each time that it was false alarm, he had proceeded to tune out their voices more. But this time, the excitement in the calls and commands didn't let up after a few seconds. Nate turned to the sound of one of the seamen yelling "Over there!", and pointing into the water, and only as he hurried towards the opposite railing did he see that two swimmers were in the water, swimming into the direction the seaman beside him indicated.

Nate didn't see anything. There had to be someone in the water, otherwise the swimmers wouldn't have gone in, but no matter how much he strained, Nate just couldn't see anything. The seaman beside him was keeping his eye on a fixed point, and Nate knew that it was part of an open water rescue that someone always kept his eyes on the person in the water. But no matter how much Nate strained as he tried to follow the man's gaze, he was still unable to discern anything clearly.

Suddenly, there was a splash of water, just a few feet away from one of the swimmers. Nate looked, but before he knew what was happening, both swimmers were zeroing in on that spot, going under water nearly synchronously. Nate forgot to breathe, and he was clenching his hands so tightly around the railing that his knuckles stood out white and bloodless.

_Please let it be them._

_Please let them be all right._

_Please._

Two heads broke the surface again, one of the swimmers clutching somebody else, but there was too much debris floating around and they were too far away for Nate to see anything clearly. He thought the man the swimmer dragged was black, but with the glare of the light reflecting off the water it was impossible to tell. Maybe Nate saw it because he so desperately wanted to man to be Hardison.

The second swimmer reappeared, but Nate was already on his way to the back of the boat, to the platform where the swimmers would climb back aboard along with whoever they had fished out of the water. There was a flurry of activity around him. Everyone seemed to have a fixed role in the proceedings, and Nate found it hard not to stand in the way of the rescue and yet still see what was going on.

For a minute, maybe two, all Nate could see were the backs of other people's heads, could see the signs of activity even though he couldn't make out the details. It was driving him mad with worry, and it took all of his self-restraint not to just force his way through and see for himself what was happening. He couldn't get in the way, and in the cramped space aboard the boat he would be in the way if he stepped any closer.

It was torture.

Maybe it was Hardison they had fished out of the water, or maybe it was Eliot. Then again, it might just as well be one of Fuentes' people, and if that was the case Nate didn't particularly want to see how the members of the Coast Guard wasted precious time on saving their life. Time his men didn't have.

And maybe whoever they had just pulled out of the water was already dead. Nate felt the bile rise in his throat at the thought, but no matter how much he tried to chase it away, that didn't make it any more unreal. They could be dead. Rationally, he knew that. It was more than a remote possibility. But it was one Nate refused to contemplate until he absolutely had to.

It was Hardison.

Nate heaved a sigh of relief as two of the men carefully carried Hardison away from the stern of the boat. The young hacker was pale, obviously so despite the dark natural pallor of his skin. But he was moving, trying to brush away the hands of the people who were trying to help him.

"Hardison!"

Nate knelt down beside the shaking young man and put a hand on his shoulder, flinching as the cold seemed to seep into his own skin immediately. Hardison was still struggling against the men who were trying to help him, even though it was obvious that he didn't have much strength left.

"Hardison, can you hear me?"

Wide brown eyes stared up at Nate, but it took a long moment until something like recognition showed on his face.

"'ate…"

Hardison's voice was hoarse and low, barely audible over all the commotion around them. His lips were taking on a decidedly bluish tinge, and his teeth were chattering.

"It's okay, Hardison. We got you. But you have to let those men help you, all right?"

Hardison weakly shook his head, still batting at the hands that were working on him.

"Hardison! Stop struggling."

It was the sharp tone of his voice that did the trick, something that surprised Nate to no end. Hardison wasn't conditioned to obeyed commands, and often it was hard to get through to him like this.

"Eliot…need to…where…"

"I'll look for him, all right? But you have to let them help you while I do, okay?"

Hardison gave a small, barely perceptible nod, and Nate squeezed his shoulder before he turned around again. So Eliot and Hardison had been in the water together. They must have been. It was the only explanation why Hardison had managed to stay above the water for so long. But despite his promise to the young hacker, Nate didn't even know whether the swimmers had found Eliot. If he and Hardison had been in the water together and the swimmers hadn't found him where Hardison had been…the swimmers must have found him. There was no other possibility Nate was willing to accept.

They had.

It was probably one of the most shocking things Nate had seen, and the image burned itself into his brain with a frightening intensity. Eliot was lying on the deck, a few feet away from where Hardison was being taken care of. No less than three people were crowding around him, but still Nate could make out enough details. Too many details, really.

Eliot was abnormally pale. His wet hair was plastered in strands over his face, and his lips and fingers were shockingly blue. One of the men kneeling next to him was cutting away his left pant leg, but all Nate saw was a flash of bloodied skin before a pressure bandage was applied and shielded the injury from view. There was no way for Nate to tell how serious the wound was.

"He's not breathing."

And that sentence shocked Nate out of whatever contemplations about Eliot's injuries he had been about to lose himself in. Not breathing was not good. Unacceptable. Eliot had to be breathing because if he wasn't…no. It simply wasn't an option. One of the men had hastily pushed the wet strands of hair away from Eliot's face, holding a respiration mask at the ready, while the other was pressing his fingers against Eliot's throat.

"I got a pulse," the second man said after a second, and Nate had to fight the urge to clamp a hand over his mouth in relief. A pulse. That was something.

Immediately, the respiration mask was placed over Eliot's mouth and one of the seamen started compressing the attached bag to press air into Eliot's lungs. One of the men kept his fingers against Eliot's neck, keeping track of his pulse. Nate knew that the men knew what they were doing. Every member of the Coast Guard who went out to open water rescues had the medical training to administer the appropriate first aid. He knew that what could be done for Eliot was being done.

No, the reason why Nate felt sick to his stomach was that he _knew_ this. He knew the feeling of standing by while people in front of him struggled to save someone's life. He was no stranger to this powerless feeling of only being able to stand by and watch while someone he cared for fought against death.

It weren't the same feelings like with Sam, definitely not. But it was just as horrible to stand by and watch, just as breathlessly painful to stand by and wait with nothing to do but cling on to the fragile hope that somehow, miraculously things were going to turn out all right.

Suddenly, Eliot's body jerked. Quickly, the mask was removed from his face and two pairs of hands carefully turned his head and upper body to the side as he spat out, coughed and threw up water.

If anything, it was nearly worse to watch this.

Nate had seen Eliot hurt before. But even then, he had always kept his masks up in place. Even the signs of pain he had shown on previous occasions had been filtered. Eliot simply didn't let on, couldn't afford to let on when he was hurt, and how much pain he was in. As far as Nate remembered, Eliot had never allowed for it to show through when he was really hurt. For the sake of the team, nowadays at least. But Nate had the suspicion that it was something that was ingrained far deeper, a survival instinct Eliot couldn't really control.

Normally.

But right now, he was barely conscious, if at all. There was no mask in place, and no strength left to put up a show.

And it was strange, disconcerting, even frightening to see Eliot like this now, with his face contorted in unguarded pain as he spat out and threw up water in between small, wheezing breaths. Eliot was in a world of pain, and all that for something as simple as breathing.

Nate purposefully ignored the fact that the water Eliot spat out was tinged a horrible shade of pink. Eliot was breathing again, that had count for something. As long as he was breathing, it couldn't be so bad. They were going to get him to the hospital as soon as possible, and then things were going to turn out just fine. And if Nate only kept telling himself that, then maybe he'd eventually be able to believe it.

An oxygen mask was secured over Eliot's face as soon as he stopped spitting up seawater and blood, and one of the men held Eliot down as the other started to cut away his clothing. But Nate saw how Eliot's hand was flailing under the hold on him, and he knew that it wasn't in the other man's nature to allow himself to be held down. Especially if he was disoriented and half-conscious at best, being restrained was only going to force him to lash out despite his failing strength. Eliot was an instinctive fighter, and even in his current state his instincts that urged him to fight back, to protect himself, overrode the agony he had to be in.

Quickly, Nate knelt down at Eliot's side and reached for his forearm, squeezing the icy skin tightly.

"Eliot, it's okay. Let them help you."

"Sir, please let go."

Nate was startled enough by the harsh command that he immediately released his hold.

"What's wrong?"

But the man was no longer paying any attention to him.

"Temperature's 90.5. BP 70 over 50. We need that MedEvac stat."

"ETA's another three minutes."

Nate had no idea what was going on, but he had enough experience in reading these things from how doctors behaved rather than from medical jargon. And even though they were no doctors, the men from the Coast Guard were worried about Eliot's condition. They were still cutting away Eliot's clothes, and as soon as they removed his shirt, Nate found himself sharing that concern. The hitter's entire left side was a mass or swelling and bruising, red and stark against his otherwise bluish-white skin. With quick and efficient movements, just as if they were afraid to move Eliot too much, the men moved him onto a backboard and covered him with blankets, though they were careful to leave his arms and legs uncovered.

And suddenly Nate understood. Hypothermia. Eliot's body temperature was low, much lower than Hardison's, who was sitting a few feet away, wrapped up in a mound of blankets with only his head sticking out. Unlike Eliot, Hardison hadn't lost blood. Of course Eliot would cool out faster.

Damn it.

"What's going to happen now?" Nate found himself asking one of the men in a voice that didn't sound like his own. Without looking up from whatever he was doing to the BP cuff around Eliot's arm, the man replied with a shrug.

"We'll have him taken out by chopper as soon as possible, and hope he doesn't crash on the way to the hospital. We're giving him warmed oxygen, but he needs to be treated at a hospital. Your other agent as well, but this one's critical."

Nate was going to ask something else, but commotion a few feet away drew his attention off of whatever inquiry he was about to make. Hardison was struggling to get to his feet, dislodging blankets and pushing away the steaming Styrofoam cup one of the seamen was holding out to him. The young hacker didn't even seem to notice that he was unable to stand on his own feet, swaying and trembling as he tried to get up.

Nate was on his feet without a conscious thought, and at Hardison's side a few seconds later. Putting a hand on the young man's shoulder, he tried to push him down while at the same time he tried to pull the blankets back around him.

"Hardison, hey. Hey! You shouldn't try to get up."

Hardison's teeth were still chattering, but after a second he managed to focus his eyes on Nate.

"Eliot…" The young man's teeth were still chattering, but his gaze was much clearer as he focused his eyes on Nate. Clearer, but still definitely frantic. Nate knelt down beside Hardison and pulled the blankets firmly around his shoulders with both hands.

"He's okay, Hardison. They're going to take both of you to the hospital, but he's going to be just fine."

And Nate sincerely hoped that this was going to be one lie that wasn't going to come back to bite him, because he didn't feel any of the confidence he was trying to project.

Hardison didn't seem to buy it, though, if the emphatic shaking of his head was any indication.

"Not breathin'. They said…I heard…not breathing."

"He wasn't when they pulled him out of the water, but he's breathing now."

Weakly, Hardison was batting at Nate's hold on him.

"Need to…not…"

He was still trying to get up even though his legs wouldn't carry him, and Nate admired the stubbornness and loyalty Hardison was showing, even if those feelings were overridden with his concern for the younger man right now. Gently, he pushed Hardison down again.

"He's breathing, Hardison. Trust me. When did I ever lie to you?"

Wide brown eyes focused on Nate's for a moment, then the young hacker sank back down to the deck as if all the fight had gone out of him.

"He's all right?"

"For now. He will be once they get him to the hospital. But you need to stay here and let them treat you, okay?"

Hardison nodded, finally accepting the steaming cup the seaman was holding out to him. His hands were shaking so badly that he had to wrap both of them around the Styrofoam cup, and even then he would have spilled the liquid without Nate's steadying hand.

"The chopper should be here soon," the seaman who was still crouching beside Hardison said to Nate. "Try to make him drink something warm and make sure that he stays put."

Nate nodded wordlessly as the seaman got up and vanished somewhere towards the stern of the boat. Carefully, because Hardison's hands were still shaking, he helped him raise the Styrofoam cup to his lips and drink a few sips of the warm tea. They sat in silence for a moment, and when Hardison spoke, his voice was so low that he barely heard it.

"He let go."

"What?"

"Eliot," Hardison forced out. "He let go."

Nate didn't understand. He could not imagine that Eliot would have willingly left Hardison to fend for himself in the water. Eliot was all about protecting the team, and he'd much rather get hurt himself than let any of them come to harm. Especially since he had known that Hardison couldn't swim. There was no situation Nate could imagine in which Eliot would have let Hardison drown.

"Eliot let you go?"

Hardison nodded, trying to burrow deeper into the blankets. "Thought he was letting me drown. But he…he didn't want to pull me under."

The raw disbelief in Hardison's eyes caused something in Nate's chest to clench painfully. Unlike his previous thoughts, that one made sense. A gruesome lot of sense. Eliot wouldn't have left Hardison to his own devices in order to save himself. But holding on for as long as he could and then letting go on the off-chance that Hardison would make it without Eliot dragging him down, Nate believed that in a heartbeat. But there was a difference between rationally understanding that and finding himself on the receiving end of that kind of sacrifice.

"He let go, Nate."

There was nothing Nate could possibly say, though. That particular realization was one Hardison would have to make out on his own, or with Eliot once all this was over. Still, he felt helpless when all he could do was squeeze the younger man's shoulder silently.

The arrival of the helicopter spared him the need to say anything else. At first it was just a rhythmic hum in the distance that grew progressively louder, but it seemed like the cue the crew of the rescue boat had been waiting for. The previously subdued activity turned into an efficient bustle as everyone prepared for the transport of the two injured men. Again, Nate could only stand by and watch while everyone else was doing their designated tasks.

The sound of the rotor blades got deafeningly loud as the chopper moved into position directly over the rescue boat. One of the seamen was giving instructions to the pilot via radio, and once the chopper was in position one of the chopper crew rappelled down with the necessary equipment. Nate wouldn't have had the time to get to Eliot before he was taken away, even if he had managed to leave Hardison sitting there all by himself.

Eliot was secured quickly and efficiently onto an elaborate backboard, and was then pulled up into the waiting chopper. Nate felt vertigo take a hold of him as he watched the orange backboard ascend on the swinging rope, and he could feel Hardison stiffen under the hand he still had on the younger man's shoulder.

Once Eliot had been pulled into the chopper, one of the men from the Coast Guard came over to where they were sitting.

"We're taking them both out by chopper," he yelled over the sound of the rotor. "They're both hypothermic, and I don't want to risk any complications."

"No." Hardison was shaking his head emphatically. "No way. I'm good. No need to bother because of me. I got my tea, got my blanket, I'm fine."

Nate opened his mouth to reply, but was beaten to it by the other man.

"It's not up for discussion, sir. You're going on that helicopter."

And Hardison did. He didn't go quietly, by no means, but despite all his protests he was strapped into the rescue contraption not even a minute after it had been lowered down again. His mouth was working a mile a minute in a poor attempt to mask how terrified he was at the prospect of being pulled up into the waiting helicopter. Nate knew that they didn't have any time to waste, not with Eliot being in critical condition. He patted Hardison's arm through the mound of blankets he was still wrapped in.

"I'll see you at the hospital. Keep an eye out on Eliot for me."

Hardison nodded, putting up a brave front, and then Nate was instructed to stand back as Hardison was lifted aboard the helicopter.

Around him, the activity didn't let up. Hardison and Eliot hadn't been the only ones on that boat, and quite probably the men from the Coast Guard had been on the lookout for other survivors for the entire time while Eliot and Hardison had been treated to. Nate could understand, it was their job after all. But his men had been found, and Nate was itching to get back ashore and race to the hospital. He had nothing left to look out for here at sea. However, Nate had the distinct feeling that it was going to take a little while until he could get back to shore somehow.

He was so lost in his thoughts as his eyes followed the small black dot that was the chopper carrying his two men, that he didn't notice at first when someone stepped up beside him. Turning around, he found Taggert had come up to his side and was following his gaze.

"I used the ship's radio to let McSweeten know we found them. He and your agents are going straight to the hospital."

Nate nodded numbly. "Thanks."

At least Sophie and Parker were going to be there, then. It didn't make him feel any less helpless, but it was something. The helicopter eventually vanished from view and Nate turned away, not really sure what to do with himself.

He hadn't craved a drink like he did now in a long time.

* * *

**TBC...**

* * *

Thanks for reading - and for your infinite patience with me. Please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.


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